


Broadwing

by She5los



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Also Gladio's queer as all hell, Canon Compliant, F/M, Galahdian!Gladio, Galahdian!Iris, Gen, M/M, Major Character Injury, Minor Character Death, More tags as I post more, PTSD, SPD!Gladio, Sensory Processing Disorder, Sensory meltdowns, The premise is that Gladio has sensory processing disorder, The teenage characters have sex and talk about it but I don't show it, Trans!Iggy, and the other bros are neurodivergent too but don't necessarily know it, because lbr he's dtf no matter who you are, brotherhood era, but I do describe them cuddling, neurodivergent characters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-24
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-06-15 11:19:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 55,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15411741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/She5los/pseuds/She5los
Summary: A canon-compliant reimagining of Gladio's life with sensory processing disorder, because who ever heard of a bodyguard who doesn't wear shirts?Current chapter:Gladio has lunch with his dad and takes Noctis to a physical therapy appointment.  I pull even more original female characters out of my ass, because what's a girl gotta do to find a videogame setting with women in it???





	1. The Party

“Lord Clarus Amicitia, Lady Ceanothus Amicitia, and Mr. Gladiolus Amicitia,” the announcer said, and Gladio and his parents walked together into the ballroom.

“Eye contact, Gladiolus,” his father murmured.  Gladio’s back was already straight, rigid, but his shoulders tensed.  Right.  Eye contact.  Super important.  No excuses to “forget” like usual; this was an important party with lots of important people and he had to make a good impression.  Iggy had been helping him with posture all week so he wouldn’t sit slouched to one side or shift his weight so much, so he had to trust that training and focus on remembering eye contact.

“Ceanothus,” Lady Bluehaven said, approaching them with her daughter Tiffany.  “I feel like I haven’t seen you in ages.”  They kissed on both cheeks.

Tiffany’s dress was olive green silk with a slight gold shift to it, and she had her hair braided and curled and arranged on her head in the newest fashion.  Gladio snuck a look at her face, smiling, and said, “It’s good to see you, Tiffany” before looking down to carefully study her bracelet.   That was enough, right?  He wouldn’t want to seem too intimate when neither of them had come out as marriageable yet.  Once, he’d managed to make eye contact for an entire conversation and later been told he was staring.

“You, too,” Tiffany said, and started fiddling with her purse.  It was a beautiful, beaded thing with a wrist strap.  “I have something for you, actually.  I got a new phone, so I want you to have my number.”  She pulled a calling card out and handed it to him.  That… didn’t seem quite right, but he couldn’t say why and their parents were talking about the lean fishing year.  “We used to have _such_ a good time talking about poetry.  I know you’ve been busy with your Shield training, but if you ever want to chat some more, I’d hate for you to be stopped just because my number didn’t carry over.”  The bead work on her bag flashed as she closed it and resettled it on her wrist.

“I’d love to,” Gladio said, glancing up at her face.  He looked around the ballroom so he wouldn’t be awkwardly looking at her body, even though he’d been learning a lot about fashion from Iris recently and would have loved a chance to see the detailing on her dress.  “I’ve been reading a lot since the last time we talked.”  Looking at the walls was probably too distant, right?  He looked at her hair instead, glancing down occasionally, just for a moment at a time, to her eyes.  “There was a really good book of nature poems that came out last year from this biologist who studies frogs.  I could lend it to you.  It doesn’t have the best technique ever, but you can really tell how much she loves frogs.”  Something about the conversation was bothering him, but he didn’t know what.  It was probably just his own bad conversation skills.

“Oh, goodness, and there’s Noctis, just looking cute as a button,” his mom said from a few feet away.  “I’m sorry, Tiffany; I’m sure you have some catching up to do, but Gladiolus, why don’t you go say hi?”

The whole conversation with Tiffany felt like it had gone over his head, but he wasn’t sure if he needed to say some kind of goodbye.  He settled on, “I’ll see if I can dig up that frog book,” even though he knew it was sitting on his shelf at home, and smiled, and didn’t realize until he was walking away that he wasn’t looking at her face when he smiled.

He tried to ‘take a step back,” like his conversation therapist was always telling him to do.  Look at the big picture instead of the details.  A girl his age had handed him her calling card and asked to talk about poetry with him.  …Frick, they were _way_ too young for that.  Did that make him a slut?  Did his _parents_ think he was a slut?  It would be so much easier to talk to Noctis for a while.

He was intercepted when he was halfway across the room by an actual family friend, not an acquaintance like the Bluehavens.  Gladio couldn’t remember a time before he knew Lord Ravataugh, who approached him without any hesitation.

“Gladdy!  Good to se you.  Flying solo for the night?” he asked in his loud, friendly way.

Gladio was pretty sure it was a joke, but he still said, “No, my parents are over there,” and looked toward them and pointed.  But he smiled to show he got the joke if there was one, or that he was glad to see Lord Ravataugh if it had somehow been a serous question.  He looked back at his parents’ friend.

“What have you been up to recently?” Lord Ravataugh asked.  “I haven’t seen you as much as I used to.”

“Mostly training to be Noct’s Shield,” he said.  “But my parents were out of Insomnia for a while, so Iris and I have mostly been at school or at home.  I’ve been at the Citadel, too, but with Noctis, not around the Council.”  Lord Ravataugh was on the King’s Council, and he and Gladio’s dad were constantly arguing political minutiae.

“He’s been staying away from the Council,” Lord Ravataugh noted.  Gladio looked up at his face and he was frowning, looking toward Noctis.  He looked toward Gladio.  _Eye contact._   Right.  Gladio looked up at his eyes, trying not to look away.  “It _might_ be time for him to start sitting in.  No better way to learn the job.”

“Iggy’s been training him in politics and law,” Gladio said.  He didn’t like the implication that Noctis wasn’t doing enough.  After school, Noctis had physical therapy and self-defense training with Gladio, then political tutoring with Iggy, and Gladio knew all about working hard to deserve the title he’d been born to, but Noctis was doing everything right.  Wasn’t he?

Lord Ravataugh smiled.  “I’m sure he has the best education of anyone his age,” he said.  “But when you learn law, it’s more theoretical.  Sitting in on a couple sessions a month might help him learn more about the practical applications of the things he’s learning from Ignis.”  He lowered his voice and said, “And I _suspect_ our young prince wouldn’t actually die of boredom if he spent an hour or two in the Council chamber.”  He leaned closer to Gladio and added, “I even suspect it would be good for him.”  He straightened back up and smiled, and Gladio smiled back.  Then he remembered about eye contact and looked at Lord Ravataugh’s eyes instead of the bottom half of his face, hoping he wasn’t coming across as antisocial or inattentive, or just rude, just because he couldn’t tell if these were the kind of jokes he was supposed to laugh at or not.  His conversation therapist had never been able to explain the difference, but he was pretty sure these were the kind of jokes you were just supposed to smile at.

“I’ll bring it up to Iggy,” Gladio offered.  Frick, part of eye contact was looking away, but he wasn’t sure he’d be able to get started again if he looked away.  Maybe, if he smiled enough, it wouldn’t matter.

“Lord Tellus Cauthess and Count Ignis Scientia,” the doorman announced.  Which was great, because Lord Ravataugh was a friend, but Gladio knew social events were where promises were made, and he wasn’t sure if he’d just promised to mention sitting in on a Council meeting to Iggy, or if he’d implied Noctis would definitely sit in on a session.

“Oh, there he is,” Gladio said.  “We can talk about it right now.  It was good to see you, Lord Ravataugh.”

“I’ll see you soon, Gladiolus.  I’m glad your parents’ trip went well,” he said, and then turned to find another conversation partner.

There were too many things happening in a row.  First Tiffany, who he hadn’t seen in months, gave him her calling card, then he was going to talk to Noctis, then he actually talked to Lord Ravataugh, and now he wasn’t sure whether to talk to Noct or Iggy, or whether he’d have to talk to King Regis or Lord Tellus if he did, or if he should just go back to his parents so he wouldn’t have to figure things out himself.

He remembered about eye contact, but didn’t have anyone to use it on.  He’d have to start his next conversation with good eye contact, instead.

Tellus made the decision for him.  While Gladio was floundering, he had been leading Iggy over. “Gladio,” he greeted.  “I take it your parents are back in town?”  Iggy, standing next to him, looked like a dream in a crisp lavender shirt and dark vest.  Gladio hated the way he went goofy around Noct’s advisor, but he went stuttery and jelly-legged around plenty of people.

“Yeah, they had a good trip,” he said, noting how tellus, clothes were coordinated with Iggy’s.  “The weather was good, and the trade security agreement’s good for another six years.”  Eye contact.  Fudge.  He hadn’t done _any._   At least it was just Tellus.

“Excellent.  Have your lessons covered the conditions to expect in a siege?”  Tellus was always quizzing him on his schooling; he got the feeling Iggy’s whole family tested each other for fun.

Gladio tried to look at Tellus’ eyes, but his eyes skidded off and he looked at his hair instead.  “Not much,” he answered.  “But enough to know most of the surrenders are over food and inadequate supplies.”

“Have you read about the castle in Duscae that was under siege for five years?” Iggy interjected.  “Only, I’ve been researching it for Noctis’ lessons and you might like to sit in on that presentation.  It’s an example of some relevance for a city like Insomnia, where a direct attack on the Wall would be more costly, in many ways, than simply camping their soldiers at each of our gates.  I’m discussing it with Noctis on Thursday, or I can send you my bibliography if you’d prefer to do your own analysis.”

“I can go to the Thursday lesson,” Gladio said.  Watching Iggy talk about something so important sounded… captivating.

“Lord Tellus,” his mother’s voice said from behind him.  “It’s so good to see you again.  Clarus and I just got back into town a few days ago.”  She and Tellus kissed each other on both cheeks and she stood next to Gladio.

“Yes, Gladio was just telling us about your success renewing the agreement,” Tellus told her.  “I hope you and your husband took some time to enjoy the countryside, too?”

“Oh, it would be a crime to visit Galdin in the fall without enjoying the coastal weather,” his mom said.  “If it’s ever safe enough, I’d love to take Gladdy and Iris there – any time of year, but they do have very mild autumns.”

“I’m actually very glad to see you here, Ceanothus,” Tellus said, “Because, when Iggy and I called on your household earlier this week, Gladio mentioned some etiquette lessons he attends called ‘conversation therapy.’” Oh, no.  “I was wondering if that was in preparation for his introduction to society.”  Oh, _no._   “I’m sure the customs are always changing, so I was thinking Ignis might like to take some lessons, just to ensure he’s fully prepared before he comes out as a bachelor.”  Okay, the world was just gonna collapse.  Just like that.  Any second now, the roof would fall or the floor would open, and Gladio would welcome it.

“Oh, I could certainly give you his number,” Gladio’s mom said, because she didn’t fear her son _dying of embarrassment in front of her,_ “but it seems to me like Iggy’s studies would bring him across all the skills he’d need.  We want to ensure that Gladio can focus on his Shield training and only receive etiquette training in the areas he needs, the same way Ignis’ martial training is highly specific to his role as one of Noctis’ attendants.  Iggy, you _teach_ etiquette, don’t you?” Yep, just rub it in that Gladio was massively incompetent at basic life skills.  That was fine.

Iggy smiled his trying-not-to-be-smug smile.  “I certainly try, but whether Noctis absorbs any of it is anyone’s guess,” he said.  He was so cocky.  He put on such a good show of overconfidence.  Gladio wanted to kiss him.

“I was actually on my way to talk to Noctis,” Gladio said, interrupting the entire conversation, and he didn’t mean to be rude, but he didn’t want to be in that conversation anymore.  He didn’t want to be there when his mom finally had to say plainly: we hire a therapist for our son because he has the social skills of a decorative rock and we’re embarrassed to be associated with him.

“I’ll come with you,” Iggy offered.  Thank goodness for small blessings; Gladio wasn’t nearly as worried about Tellus finding out about his diagnosis.  “Someone needs to make sure he doesn’t mouth off at the Duchess of Sphyrnidae again.”

Gladio smiled and nodded, and had already turned to go before he remembered he should add words.  He said, “Yeah, we can say hi together” and smiled at Iggy as he waited for the other boy to start walking.  Both their guardians encouraged them to go, telling them to have a good time and enjoy the party.

Iggy sighed as they approached Noctis, sounding too weary and long-suffering for a fourteen-year-old.  “Noctis, where did your shoes go?” he asked.  Gladio hadn’t even realized Noct wasn’t wearing them, but yep, those were socks on his feet, not shoes.

“Prompto and I were having a pajama party earlier, so he adjusted my footrests so I could wear socks, but now they’re too high for shoes.  They’re in the basket underneath,” Noctis said.

Six.  Okay.  That wasn’t even close to the worst or weirdest thing Noctis had done to avoid asking for help, so Gladio just knelt down while Iggy and Noct started bickering, pulled out the shoes to put on Noct’s feet (he let them go on readily enough, since it was Gladio), and adjusted the footrests down the half-inch Noct would need for the soles.  “That feel comfortable?” he asked, interrupting the quiet argument.

“Down a little more?” Noct asked.  “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Gladio said.  It really wasn’t, though.  He hated arguments.  He adjusted the footrests down a little more and stood up.  He smiled at Iggy and said, “There we go.  Shoes on.”  Iggy frowned at Noct’s shoes, but stopped scolding his charge.

Iggy went to talk to the Kingsglaive who had been Noct’s guard for the evening, a woman named Crowe, to ask why Noctis had been allowed to come without his shoes.  Gladio did his best not to listen to that conversation because he knew it would stress him out, instead asking Noctis, “So, any plans for tonight?  Anything on the schedule look exciting?”  His collar and tie were choking him, and there were too many conversations in the room, and he wanted _out,_ but he’d barely been there for ten minutes; how could he beg off so soon?

Noct shrugged.  “Not really.  It’s mostly adult stuff.  And I think I might be getting a fever.”

Gladio glanced over at Noct’s bodyguard.  “Does Crowe know?” he asked.  Noct just got sick out of nowhere sometimes, and Crowe was barely ever his bodyguard, so she might not know.

Noct shook his head.  “It’s fine.  If I want to ditch out later, I’ll use it as an excuse.”

Gladio smirked.  “If you puke on someone in a fancy ballroom, I’m never lettin’ you live that down,” he promised.  He looked up to see Iggy still arguing with Crowe, who looked like she thought the whole situation was hilarious.  “Iggy, it’s okay,” he said, because the Advisor got wrapped up in proper procedure sometimes and forgot that some things really didn’t matter.  “No one noticed, and he’s got his shoes on now, and they don’t push his knees up too far.  It’s alright.”

Iggy looked over, and down at Noct’s shoes, then up at Gladio.  He said, “I think I’ll cool my head on the balcony,” and stalked off without saying anything to Crowe or Noctis.

Gladio smiled at both of them and followed after his friend.  He said, “Hey, I’ve got a headache; can I join you?”

“If you like.”

They went all the way to the edge of the balcony and leaned against the metal railing.  It was cool in the early night air and Iggy leaned down to touch his forehead to it.  “I just can’t believe it,” he said, still wrapped up in his thoughts.  “Letting him leave his room without _shoes._   It took you all of ten seconds to fix the problem.”

“He doesn’t always like people touching his chair,” Gladio pointed out.  He’d bet anything the Glaive had tried to convince Noct to put his shoes on and gotten a whole bunch of non-answers about why he didn’t want them.  “I think we need to figure out how to talk to him about that stuff, because it’s your job to yell at him for not wearing shoes, but it’s my job to tell him how good it was that he didn’t jam up his knee.”  It was so easy talking to Iggy.  They both looked out over the gardens, and up at the sky, and even when he glanced at Iggy, Iggy wasn’t looking at him, so there was no eye contact to make.

“I suppose we can’t do the sensible thing and remind him that having a well-adjusted chair is essential to his public image?” Iggy asked.

“He already has too many people touching him,” Gladio pointed out.  “Not quite as much now, but for about a year after the accident.  I’m not gonna be the one to tell him he has to let a Glaive he barely knows screw with his legs.”  Gladio barely liked being touched by his family, so he couldn’t imagine how it had been for Noctis, with all the doctors, nurses, chiropractors, and physical therapists he’d seen after the marilith attack.  Gladio wouldn’t have wanted a stranger messing with his feet, either.

“Maybe we can strategize together some other time,” Iggy suggested.  “I don’t want you having to worry about it while you have a headache.  Somewhere between your physical therapy knowledge and my scheduling knowledge, we’ll figure out an answer.”

“He might be walking before long,” Gladio pointed out.  “At least enough to get out and adjust the chair himself.  He can manage a few seconds at a time now.”

“Oh, that’s excellent,” Iggy said.  Gladio tried to make eye contact again, but he was still looking down at the garden, so Gladio looked there, too.  It felt better to look at the same thing together than to look at Iggy, even if looking at Iggy made his heart pound.

Gladio leaned against the rail with him in silence, looking down at the bushes and flowers together, then let his head hang down and sighed.  “I really don’t want to go back in,” he said.  “It was really loud.  It’s so nice out here.”  The lights were bright inside, too, but most people didn’t mind that.

Iggy turned his head toward Gladio, but when Gladio turned to meet his gaze (because eye contact), he was actually looking behind Gladio, at something farther away on the balcony.  “I don’t particularly want to go back, either,” he said.  “It looks like there’s a bench over there that’s out of the way.  No one’s going to miss us for a few minutes.”

“You’re a lifesaver, Iggy,” Gladio told him, and led the way to the bench, which was placed behind a trellis of yellow, trumpet-shaped flowers, out of view of most of the balcony.

“If you were considering going in, does that mean your head’s feeling better?” Iggy asked.  Frick, yeah, he couldn’t exactly say ‘oh, yeah, I was just halfway to a sensory meltdown;’ first of all, Iggy wouldn’t even know what that meant, and second of all, if he explained what it meant, it would change how Iggy thought of him.  He just wanted to keep looking at that perfect lavender shirt, and how smooth it looked with Iggy’s tie and subtly pinstriped vest.  His eyes caught on Iggy’s lips.  They were smiling just a little, just enough that you wouldn’t know it was a smile if you didn’t know Iggy.

“Yeah, it’s a little better,” he said, and looked up at Iggy’s hair.  It always looked so soft.  “Or, mostly better, I guess.  What about you?  Have you cooled down a little?”

Iggy nodded, looking up at the Wall.  “It helped that you reminded me that he barely even knows that Glaive.  I don’t exactly like strangers touching me, either.”

“I’ve heard there are people who actually don’t mind,” Gladio joked.  Or at least, people whose skin didn’t crawl when their parents clapped them on the shoulder or a friend touched their arm.

Iggy looked him straight in the eye and said, “Lies.  Lies, heresy, and probably treason.”  That was almost definitely a smiling-joke, but it was so absurd that Gladio couldn’t help laughing at it.  He nudged Iggy companionably with his shoulder.  Iggy even smiled with him and nudged him back.

Gladio kissed him.

He almost didn’t mean to.  It definitely wasn’t premeditated.  He didn’t keep his lips on Iggy’s for long enough to think it through.  Iggy just looked so beautiful, between the dappled light shining through the trellis and the soft purple light from the Wall above, and he was funny and kind and forgiving, and Gladio loved him more than anyone else outside his family.  When he realized he’d done it, he was shocked, and from Iggy’s expression, he was, too.

“Sorry,” Gladio said.  “I didn’t—I didn’t think before I did that.”

Iggy raised his fingers to gently touch his lips.  He said, “It’s okay.  I… liked it?  I think?”

Gladio smiled, relieved.  “We could do it again, if you want.”

“I think I’d like to think about it.”  That was Gladio’s fault; he shouldn’t have acted without thinking.  Iggy was being sweet and not holding it against him, but it was horrifically rude to just spring on him like that with no warning, and if he didn’t like it, that would have been completely Gladio’s fault.  He couldn’t just go around kissing people willy-nilly—

“There you boys are.”  That was Gladio’s dad.  It was has _dad._   “Gladdy, your mother and I were worried.  Are you alright?”

He hadn’t been caught.  “Uh.  Yeah.  I just needed some fresh air.”  He felt like his tongue wasn’t working, like all his words were clumsy and badly thought-out, anyway.  “And Iggy did, too.”

His dad smiled gently.  “I’m glad you both know when you need a moment.  Are you ready to come back inside?”

Iggy stood and straightened his vest.  Gladio stood up after him, not sure how to say that a couple minutes in the middle of the lights and conversations was too much and he wanted to go home.  His parents hadn’t seen any of their friends for a month, except the Earl of Galdin, who’d been at the trade talks but wasn’t that close to Gladio’s family, anyway.  They’d just gotten there, and the dancing hadn’t even started, so Gladio couldn’t just pull them away.  Most fifteen-year-olds would love to be able to go out to a fancy party at court; the teenagers in Gladio’s novels were always sneaking out to go to parties.  He didn’t want his parents to have to take time to deal with him when they were finally getting to see their friends again.

Instead of saying how much he wanted to leave, Gladio steeled himself for the noises and lights, and having to keep wearing his nice clothes that were too tight at the collar and wrists, and said, “Noctis wasn’t feeling quite well earlier.  I should check on him.”

“That’s very important,” his dad agreed, and led the two of them inside.  Going back was like plunging into a pool of lava: his ears couldn’t take anything in, everything was too bright, and his clothes were uncomfortable.  And all that right after he’d finally told Iggy he liked him.

He walked up to Noctis, bowed slightly, and, with no regard for the conversation Noct was having with Lady Ravatogh, said, “Your Highness, you don’t look very well.  Can I help you to your room?”  It was technically true, but Noct had wanted to stay as long as he could.  The voice in the back of Gladio’s head whispered that Noctis was the kind of child his parents wanted.

Lady Ravatogh peered at Gladio’s charge and said, “You do look a bit peaky, Your Highness.  I know you’ve had some ill health recently; don’t let me keep you if you want to go.”

Noct frowned at Gladio.  Then he did that _thing_ he did sometimes where he would have swayed if he wasn’t sitting down.  “Yeah, it’s probably time to go upstairs,” he admitted.  “Sorry to leave so soon, Lady Ravatogh; I’ve been trying to learn more about urban farming ever since I had a lesson on it a couple weeks ago, so I’d love to talk about it some other time.”  He smiled cheerfully, the way Noct always did.  He smiled that way to get out of trouble, but also when he was genuinely happy.

Lady Ravatogh curtsied.  “The pleasure’s mine, Your Highness,” she said.  “I hope you have a speedy recovery.”

“Can I?” Gladio asked, gesturing to the handlebars on the back of Noct’s chair.  Noctis nodded.

“We’ll take the side exit,” Noct told him.  “There’s a service elevator right by it.”  Gladio changed course from going to the main door.  “Sorry I can’t wheel myself.”

“I don’t mind,” Gladio assured him.  “Crowe, when you text His Majesty about this, can you also include my parents?”

“I can include your dad,” she said.  “I don’t think I have your mom’s number.”

Gladio nodded even though he was looking at the hallway ahead of him.  “Yeah, that’s fine.”  They reached the elevator and Crowe pushed the button.

Noctis got to his room without incident, and Gladio helped him change into pajamas and brought him some fever reducers and nausea medicine.  Noct got to sleep quickly enough, and Gladio shut his bedroom door and went to sit on the couch in the parlor of the apartment.  He’d left the Glaive with strict instructions to get him if anything happened to Noctis, but was glad to get some time alone.

He couldn’t break down.  He couldn’t have a meltdown, not here in Noct’s apartment while a Glaive stood attentively in the next room.  She’d call his dad, and then he’d ruin his parents’ evening just like he was trying not to do in the first place.

What he _could_ do was loosen his tie and undo his top button, so he did that.  It felt like he could breathe again.  His cuffs didn’t feel so tight now that his collar was loose.  He rubbed his palms against the scratchy brocade of Noct’s couch, half-numbing them, to give himself something to feel that was interesting and nice, instead of the dryness and abrasiveness of synthetic fibers on the more delicate skin of his neck and arms.

The door opened and King Regis walked in.  Gladio made himself stop rubbing his hands on the couch; he didn’t use his absolute best manners in front of the King when they were in private, but he could at least try not to look like a weirdo.

“Sorry I took so long,” the King said, keeping his voice low.  “Is he still awake?”

“I got him to sleep,” Gladio said, knowing they both understood that was best even if Regis had come to talk to Noct.  “It seemed like just one of his usual fevers.”

Regis sat down next to him.  Gladio’s skin crawled because the King was liable to pat him on the back or put an arm around his shoulders, and he couldn’t just say no to the King.  Regis said something Gladio missed completely, and followed it with, “I’m sure it must seem like a lot of extra work.”

Gladio looked over at him and said, “Sorry?  I didn’t get that.”

“I said, I’m sure it seems like a lot of extra work,” Regis repeated.

“Nah, it’s fine,” Gladio said, because even if he didn’t know what Regis was referring to, the only part of his job that did feel difficult was going to social events, and no one else ever seemed to think those were difficult enough to apologize for.

Regis patted Gladio on the back and Gladio tried not to stiffen too obviously, keeping an agreeable smile plastered on his face.  “Well, I’m sure you can’t wait to get back to the ball,” Regis said.  “Don’t worry about Noctis; I’ll keep an eye on him until a nurse can get here.  Would you like some help with your tie before you go?”

He was going to scream if he had to put his tie back on.  Unfortunately, neither objecting nor throwing a fit were options he had.  Instead, he kept smiling and said, “Thank you,” and buttoned his top button back up.  Regis tightened his tie so it was snug, and wiggled it back and forth until he was satisfied.  Gladio wondered if that was how Iggy felt when his asthma acted up, but thanked the King and didn’t loosen his tie until he’d made his way to one of the bathrooms outside the Council chamber, one of the ones with a couch and breath mints and everything a person might need to fix their appearance during an especially long legislative debate or War Council meeting.

Gladio was there for the couch and the low-ish lighting.  He loosened all the stiff fabrics around his throat and lay down, rubbing his hand up and down against the corner of the wooden base of the couch as he finally let himself cry.  He’d just let off some tension, then he’d clean himself up and get back to the party.  He’d tell his dad he’d stayed with Noctis a little longer, and he’d tell Regis he’d gone straight back to the party, and no one would think to confirm his story because it didn’t really matter and he’d get back there eventually, anyway.

His text alert noise went off three times.  It went off another time before he could pull himself away from his comforting, repetitive motions to check it.

_Dad, 07:52PM: Reggie said you were heading back a while ago.  Everything alright?_

_Dad, 07:52PM: If the CG hassles you over ID again, get me their badge #’s_

_Dad, 07:53PM: If we find you in a side room with Tiffany Bluehaven, you aren’t going out for a week.  I saw how she looked at you._

_Dad, 08:04PM: Getting worried.  Please respond._

Gladio felt nauseous.  Maybe that was a good thing: a legitimate reason to want to go home.  He texted back, _Feeling a little sick.  Waiting it out in the Council bathroom in case it’s just gas.  Sorry to worry you._

The response was almost immediate: _You weren’t feeling well earlier, either.  Should I call Jared to come pick you up?_

Gladio was so relieved, he felt fresh tears run out of his eyes.  He wrote back, _Yeah, that might be best.  Sorry._   Then he texted Iggy, _I’m not feeling that good, so I’m going home.  See you soon, and I’ll def be there Thurs._

He already felt less nauseous, but he wasn’t about to tell his dad that.  He got a message back: _Nothing to apologize for, Gladdy.  Get a good sleep tonight <3_

His mom wrote him, _Would you like one of us to go home with you?  I can call a doctor to meet you there if you need one._   He was about to respond until he got a text from Iggy; that had to take priority.

_You found the loophole that lets you sneak out.  Maybe I’ll try that next time._

Gladio was so in love.

He wrote back, _lol sure did! How well can you fake a fever?_   Iggy would like that, right?  Then he answered his mom, _It’s fine I just need to sleep it off. I’m going to grab my coat and go to the front steps._   He felt bad for lying, but he was pretty sure he’d felt better than this the last time he had a cold.  He just really wished there was an injury or microorganism he could blame, instead of just having a terrible brain that didn’t get along well with anyone’s idea of who he should be.

He washed his face, walked to the elevator, and went to get his coat.  His mom was there, looking perfectly put-together as always; apparently, not even looking for her missing son could ruffle her.  She frowned after she greeted him.  “You do look a little peaked,” she said, though Gladio would bet that was just the crying.  She took off one of her long gloves and felt his cheek with the back of her hand.  “Not that warm, but if your stomach was cramping, better to go home, anyway.”  She put her glove back on and smiled.  “You’ll feel better in no time, I know it.  Are you really sure you wouldn’t like me or Dad to go with you?”

“Really, Mom,” Gladio said, smiling, “You’re both needed here.  Especially with King Regis upstairs.  Enjoy the party; it’s just a little cold or something.”

“If you’re sure,” his mom said, still looking uncertain.  “You’d say something if you needed us, though, right?  We aren’t going to have a repeat of that flu incident last year, when you were waking up every couple hours and didn’t tell anyone until morning…?”

He didn’t realize it was a question for a moment, since she ended it on a downward inflection.  When he finally understood that she was waiting for an answer, he said, “No, if I throw up or my fever gets bad,” I’ll tell Jared.”  Neither thing was going to happen, though, because Gladio was just faking to get out of going back to the party.

His mom grabbed her phone out of her purse.  She tried to unlock it a couple times before taking her entire right glove off again so the touchscreen would register her swipes.  She smiled at Gladio and said, “Jared’s here.  Let’s get your coat.”  She helped him into his jacket and walked him to the front steps of the Citadel.  She kissed him on the forehead and hugged him tight before seeing him off.  He picked his way down the forty-three steps (Iggy counted them one summer when there was nothing better to do) and went to sit in the passenger seat of the car Jared had brought.  Iris was in the back seat, looking sleepy, and Talcott was next to her in his car seat, passed out in his footie pajamas.  “Hey there, Moogle,” Gladio said, turning around to smile at his sister.  “Didn’t think I’d get to say good night to you properly.”  He turned frontward and buckled his seatbelt.

“Hi, Gladdy,” Iris said, and yawned as wide as her jaw would allow.

“Fading out already?  It’s barely 8:30,” Gladio joked.  “You must have spent your whole nap time running around your room, playing Solheim gladiators with your brother, or something.”

“Mm-hm.”  Alright, she was too tired for jokes.  Quiet felt better, anyway.

“There’s some mint tea for you, if you want it,” Jared said, tapping the lid of a travel mug in the passenger-side cup holder that Gladio hadn’t noticed.

“Thank you,” Gladio said quietly, and sipped the tea.  The music was extremely quiet instrumental music, and he could close his eyes against the harsh street lights and oncoming headlights.  He was still miserable, but it helped.

They reached the house.  Gladio took a moment to breathe before getting out.  Jared was already getting Talcott out of his seat, so Gladio unbuckled Iris, who was similarly passed out, and hefted her against his shoulder.  She stirred a little, but was back to sleep again in a moment.  Carrying her to bed, Gladio marveled at how carrying a seven-year-old, even one who was big for her age, up to the second floor of the Amicitia house and laying her down gently in bed was less exhausting than standing still in a brightly-lit room full of people.  He carefully removed Iris’ jacket, shoes, and socks and tucked her into bed.

He went out into the hallway, where Jared was waiting with a bottle of ibuprofen and a mug of water.  “Not like last year’s flu, I hope,” he said quietly, probably not wanting to wake the little ones.  “Your father said you were nauseous…?”

Gladio took the pill bottle and the mug.  “Nah, I think that was just nerves.”  He ducked into the bathroom so he could brush his teeth and smiled at Jared.  “Thank you for picking me up.  I think I’ll be fine after I sleep.”

Jared said good night.  Gladio was crying before he even finished brushing his teeth, though he kept quiet so he wouldn’t attract attention.  He slunk silently into his bedroom, changed into a simple tank top and plaid sleep pants, and sat down on the floor.

It was definitely better, having a meltdown in his own bedroom.  He knew what to do to calm down.  He rubbed his hands over the carpet, like he’d done with Noct’s couch fabric but better and more familiar.  He mashed the heels of his palms against the sides of his face for the pressure and cried himself out as quietly as he could.  Finally, he could let himself acknowledge that the whole night had been terrible.  He hadn’t made enough eye contact, he interrupted conversations, he made his parents worry, and he’d pulled Jared away from the house when he was supposed to be putting Iris and Talcott to bed.  He’d pulled Noctis away from an important conversation for his own selfish reasons, so he wasn’t even a good Shield.  He was a walking disaster who couldn’t do anything right.  It was easier to think about when he could dig his fingertips into his arms and legs; after a lot of conversations with his parents, he kept his nails short enough that they couldn’t hurt him.

He heard muffled voices in the hallway.  It sounded like Jared and his mom, and the two-part footstep sound only confirmed his mom was home.  He looked up at his wall clock; was it really after midnight, when his parents were meant to come home?  No, he’d only been back about an hour.  Why was his mom there?

There was a quiet knock on his door.  “Sweetie?” his mom asked quietly, like he might be sleeping, “Are you still up?”

If he didn’t say anything, she might come in; he knew she checked on Iris like that.  But, if he lay down to pretend to sleep, he’d make too much noise.  So he said, “Yeah, I’m awake.  Just reading a little before bed.”  His voice sounded _terrible;_ why was he lying when she was going to find out immediately?

“Can I give you a good night hug?”

She was calling his bluff.  That was all she was doing.  She was going to be so disappointed in him when it became obvious he’d been hiding his meltdown from her for—for what?  So she wouldn’t worry, definitely, but she was already worried or she wouldn’t have come home.

“I’m having a really hard time getting to sleep,” he told her, and didn’t try to disguise the way crying changed his voice.

“What’s going on, Gladdy?  Can I come in?”

He didn’t want anyone to see him like that, but she was only trying to help, and she’d come all the way back from the Citadel just to check on him, so he said, “Okay.”  She opened the door, still in her dark blue satin evening gown and her gloves, and knelt in front of him.

“Okay, Gladdy, you’re doing fine,” she told him in a soft voice.  “I’m just going to pull your hands off your arms so you can rub them on the carpet again.  That helps, too, right?  You’ve done a good job of keeping your nails short.”  She touched his hand and the touch was so repulsive that both of his hands immediately loosened.  He slowly lowered them to the carpet.  “No more touching, Gladdy,” she said.  “No more touching.  It’s alright.”  She sat down, right there on the carpet in front of him, frowning.  “Why didn’t you tell me anything, love?”

He tucked his head against his knees so he wouldn’t have to look at her and said, “You hadn’t seen anyone in a month.  I didn’t want you to—I didn’t want to be the reason you had to leave.”  There.  That was the most accurate way to say it.  He wasn’t going to lie anymore.

It felt like forever before she asked him, “How long were you feeling like that, Gladiolus?”  His name sounded so pretty when she said it in her Galahdian accent.  He knew people whose parents used their full names when they were mad, but his mom always said his name really gently.

He tucked his head down further.  “Since before we left, I guess.  I thought I could handle it.”

He heard her shift toward him, and then sit back again.  “Sweetie, you could have stayed home.  It’s a lot of pressure, to be that young at the Royal Court.”

“Noctis manages it,” Gladio pointed out.  “Iggy does fine.  They’re both younger than me.”

“Noctis had to leave,” his mom reminded him.  “He was miserable, too.”

“He was sick,” Gladio corrected her.  “He had a fever.  A real one.  I was just faking so I could leave.  I didn’t want you to be disappointed in me.”  That was so true, he started crying again.  He curled his toes up tight and pulled his head up so he could rock a little and rub his hands against the carpet.  His mom didn’t say anything, so he added, “I don’t want you to feel like you can’t take me anywhere.”  He knew how it got for families with kids like him.  He knew people from school whose parents showed up at all the big events of the season, and he knew he would never see those kids at any party, ever.  But then he got to go out and he didn’t make any eye contact, so he wasn’t exactly building a case that he could act appropriately at grown-up events.

“Oh, Gladiolus.”  His mom shifted a little, but he didn’t look at her.  “Gladdy, we love you.  Do you really think we’d try to hide you away?”

“I don’t make enough eye contact,” Gladio reminded her.  “I kept forgetting tonight, even though Dad reminded me.”

“Of course you did, Gladdy; you were already overwhelmed.”  She grabbed his shoulder firmly, rubbing her thumb over it.  Hard touches were always easier to handle than soft ones.  “Gladdy, even if you weren’t acting appropriately, that would be our fault for bringing you when you weren’t prepared.”  He leaned toward her and let her hug him.  “You were a perfect gentleman tonight, Gladio.  I haven’t talked to a single person, tonight or any other time, who thought you were rude or even just too young.  You carry yourself very well, Gladiolus.”

He grabbed onto her arm and pulled it closer against his chest.  “I don’t,” he told her, not wanting to get his hopes up over a comforting lie.  “I don’t make eye contact, and I don’t get jokes, and—and people only pretend I’m doing okay because Dad’s the Shield and they don’t want to be rude, but why would it be so hard if I was good at it?”

His mom kissed him on the side of his head.  “You work hard at it, and that’s _why_ you act so mature in public,” she told him.  “When people see a teenager who doesn’t meet their eyes, they just think they’re shy.  That’s nothing to worry about, love.  Everyone has a couple kinks to work out when they’re fifteen; it doesn’t make you bad.  It certainly doesn’t make Dad or me think you shouldn’t come along.”  She sighed.  “I’ll talk to Dad in the morning.  I think all three of you boys could use another year or two before you should be dealing with that kind of stress.  You’re having panic attacks, Noctis is getting sick, and I’m sure it stresses Iggy out, too.”

Gladio nodded.  Yeah, that was… Good?  It didn’t feel good.  It felt like they were going to hide him at home until he was good enough, but his mom was saying it to be kind, and he didn’t want to turn down something she offered out of compassion.  Maybe it was childish of him to want to go along before he was ready.

“Something’s still wrong,” his mom said.  “Did I screw something up, or are you just tired?”

His eyes tensed uncomfortably, pushing out more tears.  “Sorry I screwed it up,” he said.  He knew it was bad manners, apologizing for something someone didn’t blame you for, but he felt like such a fuck-up.

“What did you screw up?” his mom asked, keeping her voice gentle.  There was a pause while Gladio tried and failed to say it out loud.  “Oh, love,” she said finally, “Do you think that’s us leaving you behind?”

It didn’t feel as bad as he expected to nod yes.  His mom squeezed him tighter and said, “Gladiolus, I would never do that to you.  Dad and I are _so_ proud of you.  But I wouldn’t want to take you to something where you spend the whole time wanting to leave.”

“I need to get used to them,” Gladio mumbled.  “I need to… know how to go to them and stay.  For my future.”

“There’s time for that,” his mother soothed.  “You’re so grown up, it’s easy for me to forget you’re only fifteen.  Fifteen is old enough to come along if you want to, but it’s plenty young enough to stay home if you prefer it.”  She kissed him on the head again and asked, “What if we didn’t take you to parties, except the fun ones like the Solstices and Leviathan Day, but we made sure you could opt into all the smaller social calls?  Just a few people at a time.  Would that make you feel included?”

Gladio considered that.  The feeling of something being wrong had gone away.  His mom’s plan actually felt really good, even though he was still stressed from overreaching himself.  He nodded, and leaned against her more.  He said, “Yeah, I like that,” and his eyes leaked exhaustion-tears that seemed to help all his stress leave his body.

“Do you need to stim some more, or is it time for bed?” his mom asked, holding him at arm’s length so they could see each other.

“Time for bed,” Gladio answered, and looked behind himself at his nightstand.  He had a new book waiting for him, and the one that went before it, but nothing comforting.  “I need to grab a book first, though.”

He went to look over his bookshelf while his mom got up and pulled his sheets down.  He picked up a fantasy adventure story he’d read three times before, and put it on his nightstand.  He got into bed and pulled the covers over himself, and his mom kissed him on the cheek and said good night and left, closing the door behind her.  To keep from letting himself think about all the things he’d screwed up or what a burden he was as a child, he focused on the familiar story until he was too tired to focus on the words, then he put the book down, turned off the lamp on his nightstand, and fell asleep.

 


	2. Dating

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gladio starts thinking about the upper-crust Insomnian dating scene.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Tw for transphobia in this chapter (this is p much it for the whole story, and I had a transmasc friend do a sensitivity read for me, but all in all, no single story is essential to the overall compilation, so don't feel bad if you don't read it.) Incidents include:  
> -Gladio sticking his foot in his mouth in the first story (Go from "That was the most important thing, anyway" and skip straight to the time skip; it's just Iggy and Gladio getting their relationship settled now that Iggy's come out)  
> -Iggy worrying about T because there isn't enough reliable medical literature (Go from "I don't know what to call myself; I just know I'm not straight" to "You're gonna get acne")  
> -Iggy describing a transphobic incident in detail (Go from "For real? Congrats! Why haven't you introduced me?" to "Gladio took another sip of his coffee.")
> 
> I'm pretty sure that's it for the entire fic, but if there are any issues in future, I'll be sure to give a heads up.

“I’ve been thinking about that kiss,” Iggy confessed on Monday while they took a break from sparring together.  “In fact, I’ve barely been able to think of anything else. I think I’m not ready for a relationship.”

Gladio felt blindsided.  He felt like Iggy had started saying one thing and then pulled a complete 180 and finished by saying the opposite thing.  “But… If you were thinking about it all weekend…”

“I feel very neutral about it,” Iggy said.  “I liked the flattery, and I like you. And I did have a crush on you, for a long time.  I don’t—I  _ can’t _ have a crush like that again.  Not until I’m sixteen or so.”

How could he possibly know that?  “What, do you have some special puberty countdown clock?” he joked, trying to keep things light and not make Iggy feel bad for something he apparently couldn’t help.

“I have an ongoing prescription for puberty blockers,” Iggy told him.  “That more or less amounts to the same thing.”

That was… shocking.  And profoundly Iggy, to figure out how to make his body do whatever he wanted.  “Why would you want to block it?” he asked. “You’re gonna have to go through it sometime.”

“Oh, I fully intend to,” Iggy told him.  “It’s… a little more complicated, when you’re transgender.  All this medical supervision for something most people’s bodies handle naturally.”

That was absolutely not something Gladio had ever heard about before.  Was Iggy coming out to him? No – Iggy was  _ definitely _ coming out to him, no doubt about that.  But how was Gladio supposed to respond?

“I don’t—I didn’t know,” he said, trying to think of some way to say: I support you, you’re my friend, nothing is different.

“I didn’t, either, until a few months ago,” Iggy told him.  “But I did want you to know, as my friend.”

Right.  Yeah. They were friends.  Gladio had kissed him, but they still got to see each other all the time, and hang out, and be in Noct’s entourage together.  That was the most important thing, anyway.

“Just to make sure I’m clear about this,” Gladio said, his voice low, because everything he knew was from things he’d read online from library computers while anonymously logged in, “You mean you’re a boy now, right?  Just with a…?”

“Well, yes,” Iggy said, sounding frustrated.  “But you do realize I’m telling you it  _ won’t _ work out, right?”

“I… Yeah.”  What else could he say?  Of course that was rude. “Sorry.”

Iggy shrugged.  “I guess I should get used to it,” he said.  He shifted a little on the bench and added, “Still better than when the doctor who told me what periods are insisted I was a girl.”

Gladio smirked.  Was that really his know-it-all best friend?  “You needed a  _ doctor _ to tell you what periods are?” he asked.  Between school and his parents, he had a pretty firm grasp of them, and Tellus didn’t seem squeamish.  Neither did any of Iggy’s much-older cousins.

“Gladio.  I needed a doctor to tell me what a period was because I didn’t think they happened to boys,” he said.  “Have  _ you _ ever woken up to find your genitals covered in blood?  It’s objectively terrifying.”

“That’s…” A lot more vivid than he’d been expecting.  “Yeah, that’s fair. Sorry; I’ll shut up now.”

“You did make a sublimely amusing face,” Iggy told him, smirking.  “I should phrase it that way more often. Back to the point, though: I can love you when I’m sixteen.  That’s when I start testosterone.” He smiled (Six, even when he was rejecting Gladio, he was beautiful) and added, “Watch for me to have all the troubles you’re having now.  Then you’ll know I’m in puberty.”

.-._.-._.-._

Gladio’s parents made good on the promise to take him along on social calls.  He found himself at Bluehaven Manor not long after Tiffany came out as marriageable, and went for a walk around the garden with her while being careful not to leave their parents’ sight.

“I brought you a book you might enjoy,” he told her, and handed her a slim volume of verse from the Izuniya era.  His crush on her wasn’t that bad, but he did admire her savviness in social situations, and the way she floated through every conversation in a room, seemingly uninterested in everything, but ending up with every piece of gossip by the end of the night – half to share and half to keep for what she called “her own personal use.”  He didn’t know how he’d become one of her confidants for the juicy bits, but she seemed to love telling him all the recent scandals and events.

She smiled and took the book, examining it, but didn’t thank him.  Instead, she looked up at him. He wasn’t sure when he’d outgrown her.  “Aren’t you a touch young, Gladiolus?” she asked him. “Empty flirting is fun, don’t get me wrong, but I’m on the market.”  She looked back toward their chaperones, sitting playing bridge on the patio while he and Tiffany walked to the edge of a decorative fish pond.  “I would say to get back to me in a couple years, but I don’t expect to be searching for very long.” She pushed the book back toward Gladio and said, “I think we’re very similar, Gladio.  I don’t think you’ll be looking for very long, either, before you slip a ring onto someone’s finger and make her very happy.”

He laughed a little, nervously.  “I can’t pretend to have half your social skills,” he admitted, obviously fishing for advice.

“Oh, picking up gossip is the easiest,” she told him.  “You just put on your stupidest face, and people will say anything around you.  If you’re a woman, that goes double if you’re holding an embroidery hoop; you’re one of the only men I know who understands a woman can use her hands and ears at the same time.”

“I make it a habit not to underestimate women,” Gladio told her.  “My sister’s clever as anything, and she’s only eight. And my mom doesn’t put up with any of that.”

“I think everyone admires your mom,” Tiffany admitted.  “Except the xenophobes. But I try not to talk to them too much, anyway.”

“Uh, yeah,” Gladio said.  “Me, either.” He’d learned pretty young to identify backhanded compliments by the uneasy way they made him feel.  His parents weren’t really friends with people who thought they were inherently better than Gladio’s mom, but he still understood why people latched onto Iris as the “classic beauty” and gave Gladio the same few compliments about “strong features” and sometimes even “exotic charm.”

“It’s really a shame,” Tiffany said.  “If you were a little older, of course you’d be out of my league, but I could still at least try.  I do think I have a good chance with that Sweetrock boy, but he isn’t anywhere near as charming as you, and his parents keep asking about my lineage.”

Gladio smiled a little.  “If it’s any help, people do that to me and I’m not even trying to marry into their families.”  Specifically, they asked about his mother’s line, never his father’s, and the same questions over and over about how Galahdian title inheritance worked, so they could suss out whether they thought his lineage was real enough.

“It’s really different,” Tiffany said.  “Your mother’s a princess and your father works with the King, and you can claim both their titles if you’re smart about it.  Your lineage is recorded for centuries on either side. I’m not saying there’s no reason to question me; I just hate it.”

“The worst are school administrators,” Gladio told her.  “You wouldn’t believe. I’m sure potential in-laws get terrible about it, but if you ever need any resources from a private school, they start throwing the weirdest insults.  It’s like, excuse me, are you implying my Galahdian mother is the reason I need to see a counselor, and not all the entitled boys who push me into walls and make fun of me?”

“Holy shit,” Tiffany said, and Gladio believed with his entire being that she truly, genuinely didn’t want to marry him.  “And I guess they aren’t going to do anything about the bullying, either.”

“They never do,” Gladio agreed, and quickly changed the subject.  “I hope you do find a good match.”

“You, too,” she said, smiling.  “Believe me, you’ll be a catch.”

.-._.-._.-._

It wasn’t like Gladio had any great lack of crushes.  He cycled through them like a bad solitaire hand, and while he certainly didn’t flirt with all of them, there were so many that even picking just a few meant he became known as a huge flirt.  As he approached sixteen, his social skills grew at light speed. His speech therapist told his parents he was doing just fine and wouldn’t need much more help, and he got so much practice in introducing himself to people that even that didn’t feel daunting anymore.  He learned how to smile with confidence, and if he still had trouble looking people in the eye, that didn’t stop him from holding himself confidently, whether he was talking to someone his own age or even someone much older.

It didn’t take long to figure out that it was both easier to get out of sight with boys and easier to convince them to kiss you.  It was a lot riskier than flirting with girls, but felt just as good, and he quickly met a whole network of young gentlemen who weren’t straight, and sometimes even got to meet young gentlewomen in the same boat.  They started a social club, sort of.

“You should come,” he told Iggy as they took a break together at the Crownsguard training gym.  “I can take over Noctis-sitting duty if you want to take some time to meet everyone.”

“Gladio, I told you: I’m not interested in dating.”

“It’s not about dating,” Gladio told him.  “It’s about having friends who don’t say homophobic bullshit.  Or transphobic bullshit. It’s a social club.”

Iggy gave him a supremely unimpressed look.  “I hardly think it’s usual to date five separate people from your social club.”

Gladio grinned.  “To be fair, one of them was only a kiss.  And I’m not saying dating isn’t an  _ option, _ but it’s not like it’s obligatory.”

Iggy sighed.  “I just don’t want to get in trouble,” he said.  “I don’t want to be… ‘Incriminated’ is the wrong word, but you know that’s how people would think of it.”

“I know,” Gladio reassured him.  “But I also know how hard it is not having friends, and I know how lonely it is being… whatever I am.  I’m sure it’s harder being trans.”

“You aren’t bi?” Iggy asked, as if that were ever a straightforward question.

“…Probably?  I mean, I guess that’s accurate…  I kind of feel like it’s bad luck if I name it?”  That sounded ridiculous, didn’t it? “I just don’t think it fits.  It isn’t the right word for me. And neither is ‘pan.’ I don’t know what to call myself; I just know I’m not straight.”

“I don’t think I am, either,” Iggy told him.  “But… I worry. I worry a lot that, when I start testosterone, it’s going to change something about me.  I… I worry that I was straight, before, and that I’m not going to like boys when I start it. There aren’t any studies on that.  They say it makes you horny, but I just want to know if I’m going to be gay again.”

“Iggs, you’re gonna be fine,” Gladio told him.  “Maybe testosterone will make you hornier, but it’s still  _ your _ brain in there.”

Iggy shifted uncomfortably and drank some water.  “Yes,  _ my _ brain,” he said, “Which was very interested in boys when it was flooded with estrogen and is completely disinterested in anyone now.  I’m not sure free will has that much to do with it.”

Gladio smirked and nudged Iggy’s shoulder with his own, and said, “Your brain, which managed to be male whether it had estrogen or not.  Puberty made you horny, because puberty does that. I like boys plenty, and I’m growing like a weed and  _ leaking _ skin oils, so I think it’s safe to say I have about as much T as my body can handle.  My dad had to sit me down and tell me to decide whether I’m gonna shave every day or grow a beard because I have  _ actual scruff. _  And  _ fuck _ do I think boys are cute.  Boys are unbelievably cute, Iggy; you’re gonna love having crushes again.”

“Thank you,” Iggy said quietly.  “I don’t really believe you, but I can tell you believe it.  It means a lot to me.”

“Hey, um.”  This was a topic change, but the most important thing was for Iggy to know Gladio cared about him, right?  “If you want someone with you the first time you use it, I’m not squeamish about needles at all.”

“Thank you,” Iggy said again.  “It gets more daunting the closer it gets.  Three months… I’m so excited, but all I can think about s what could go wrong.  I just want to have all the normal reactions to it.”

“You’re gonna get acne,” Gladio joked.  “You’re gonna be a greasy, sweaty teenager like everyone else, and you’re gonna fall hard for, like, ten different boys.”

Finally, Iggy smiled, and it was like the whole room had gotten brighter.  “Tell me about my shoulders,” he murmured, like it was embarrassing. But Gladio couldn’t be happier to reassure his friend.

“Shoulders?  Iggy you’re gonna have  _ amazing _ shoulders; Six know all your cousins do.  And you’re gonna get terrible growth spurts that make your bones ache as your body catches up to all that growing you haven’t been doing.”

“It’s going to be a relief, isn’t it?” Iggy whispered, sounding like he might actually believe Gladio’s reassurances this time.

“It’s gonna be a huge relief, Iggy,” Gladio promised.  “You’re gonna feel like you. Everything’s gonna go normally.  You are not the outlier.”

Iggy nudged Gladio’s shoulder back, but then sort of leaned against him.  He murmured, “Thank you. I really do appreciate it, Gladio.”

.-._.-._.-._

Iggy went on testosterone, and slowly calmed down about that, and started putting all the energy he’d spent worrying about his transition into worrying about his skin.  His acne did get pretty bad, but that was just how teenage skin worked, sometimes, and Gladio didn’t mind reminding him it was normal.

When he was sixteen, Iggy also got an apartment in the Citadel, located fairly near Noct’s room, and split his time between that apartment and his uncle’s house in town.

When he was seventeen, at the same time Iggy was gaining independence, Gladio’s parents told him in no uncertain terms that he was coming out as a bachelor as soon as humanly possible so he’d stop flirting with all and sundry.

“Shouldn’t they be happy?” Gladio whined, lying upside down on Iggy’s couch while Iggy made them both coffee.  “They must know I’m game to come out; why do they have to make it sound like a punishment?”

“I think they see you as a little  _ too _ game to join the dating scene,” Iggy said.  He always said the reasonable thing, even when Gladio was fishing to be commiserated with.  “The point of coming out isn’t to date as many people as humanly possible; you know that, right?  It’s to find a suitable match.”

Gladio smiled.  “Iggy. Be real; who am I going to meet through  _ my parents _ who isn’t gonna be alright to marry?”

“Oh, plenty of people,” Iggy said as his phone timer went off.  He strained the coffee into two mugs and added, “They’ve only caught you sitting suspiciously close to a girl a few times, but every time you look at someone in our age group, it’s obvious you think they’re a snack.  You take one sugar and a moderate amount of cream, right?”

“What?  Uh, yeah.  Thanks.” Gladio started maneuvering himself right-side-up again.  “Wait, are you seriously telling me you don’t think everyone our age is cute?  Because, swear to Titan, I’m into literally half the people I know between sixteen and twenty.”

“Well.  I wouldn’t say  _ everyone,” _ Iggy told him, putting a mug and a coaster in front of Gladio on the coffee table.  “The boys, certainly, though I flatter myself, I certainly  _ hope _ I’m a bit more subtle than you.”  He sat down next to Gladio and added, “My uncle is very happy, as my guardian, that my transition has led to increased feelings of fraternity with boys my age.”  Gladio snorted, but Iggy continued seriously, “Obviously, this is a positive change in my social development, and not at all related to wanting to rail most of the teenage boys I meet.”  He sipped serenely from his coffee mug while Gladio cracked up.

“So—so, tell me about your apartment,” Gladio said when he finally stopped laughing too hard to speak.  “How many young gentlemen have you deflowered on this very couch?” He giggled a little and absolutely did not touch his coffee because he would have spilled it immediately.  “What dark secrets does this den of hedonism hold?”

“I think you’re assuming I’m as good at flirting as you are,” Iggy told him.  “Anyway, it’s only been two months; when you’re actually  _ trying _ to hide your sexuality, these things take time.”  He sipped his coffee and added, “…But I did blow a baron’s son in the kitchen last week.”

Gladio snorted again and almost fell off the couch.  “For real? Congrats! Why haven’t you introduced me?”

Iggy shrugged.  “Well, he was well enough to kiss.  Very appreciative of my mouth on his penis, even, though I’m sure my technique is moderate at best.  But then he slipped his hand into my pants and had the gall to look disappointed, so I threw him out.”

“…Oh.”  That was… decidedly less funny.

“Yes.  So my first thought after that wasn’t really in the realm of looking for a time to tell you and Noctis.”  After a short pause, he added, “Probably for the best; he complained about using a condom for a blow job.”

“Wowww, real class act you found there,” Gladio said.  “Must’ve been mad he didn’t have as much big dick energy as you.”

Iggy snorted, but said, “My thoughts exactly.”  He took a sip of coffee and added, “I need a better vetting process.  Most of the people who recognize I’m making eyes at them are just fine for kissing in hallways and such, but I can’t have things fall apart like that as soon as we get to my room.  How do you figure it out?”

Gladio shrugged, and finally took a sip of his coffee.  “I don’t usually get that far,” he pointed out. “And now my parents still think I need to me monitored…”

“You usually d—You’ll flirt with anything that  _ breathes!” _ Iggy yelled.

“Uh.  Yeah. And I live with my parents and can’t drive.”  He had the will, sure, but he didn’t really want to do the amount of sneaking around that would be needed to find a way.

“They don’t plan to monitor every interaction,” Iggy pointed out, his voice immediately taking on that subdued tone that meant he was strategizing.  “If they think you’re straight, they probably won’t mind you running off with boys.”

“True… Good coffee, by the way.”

“Thank you; dark roasts are my favorite.  What I’m saying is: there’s one person your age who they would never question you spending time with.”

Gladio laughed.  “Ewww, Noct’s only fourteen!  That’s  _ barely _ a teenager!  Anyway, he’s into Luna and they’re betrothed, so I’m not messing that up.”

_ “There’s someone else,” _ Iggy said, like he was trying really hard to will Gladio to understand him.  “He’s a  _ boy, _ and you’ve  _ kissed _ him, and you see him privately every day and no one gives it a second thought.”  That sounded like Iggy, but it couldn’t be Iggy.  _ “And he’s never making you coffee again if you don’t respond soon.” _

Oh.  Oops.  Maybe he did mean himself.

“You’re into me?” Gladio asked, smiling in disbelief.

Iggy pinched the bridge of his nose and tilted his head back.  “Gladio. I’m pretty sure everyone in a five-mile radius is into you.  Surely it isn’t a surprise.”

Gladio smiled and grabbed Iggy’s elbow.  He pulled the hand that had been pinching Iggy’s nose to him and kissed the knuckles.

Iggy smiled.  “Do you want to kiss?” he asked.  “We could.”

Gladio grinned.  Iggy was right: they had all the time in the world.  They had to work out Noct’s schedule for the week at some point, but everyone knew it was a social visit first.  They could kiss practically the whole time and say they’d just talked and no one would know anything. “I’d love to,” he said.  He put a hand on Iggy’s shoulder and pulled him closer to kiss him, just for a moment, testing the waters.

Iggy made a face.  “Coffee first,” he said.  “You taste like coffee ice cream; it’s too sweet.”

_ “You’re _ sweet,” Gladio grumbled, but he went back to sipping his coffee as if he hadn’t been waiting years for this chance.

“Does this… make us boyfriends?” Iggy asked.

Gladio smiled.  “Sure. I’ve… kind of been into you forever, so I’m down.”  He felt giddy, thinking about actually getting to date Iggy.  Getting to call him cute names. Getting to be even closer to his best friend.  It sounded amazing.

Iggy nodded.  “Just wanted to make sure we were on the same page,” he said quietly.  “What will you do about coming out?”

Gladio shrugged.  “If I have to be a bachelor, I’ll be a bachelor.  I can dance and go riding and whatever as well as anyone else.  If anyone tries to do any matchmaking, I’ll just say I’m not interested.”

Iggy smirked.  “Yes, because that isn’t going to look suspicious to your parents.”

Gladio took a sip of his coffee.  “We’ll figure something out,” he told Iggy.  His boyfriend. “We’ll find something that works for us.  But I’m not in any rush to marry, and I don’t think anyone’s gonna mind if I take a while.”  He looked at Iggy and asked, “Can I kiss you on the cheek?”

Iggy leaned his head so his cheek was facing Gladio, and Gladio kissed him just under his eye.

“You’re absolutely adorable, did you know that?” Iggy asked, solemnly sipping some more of his coffee.  “It’s your own downfall; I’m going to keep holding you to this standard.”

“Please do,” Gladio told him.  “You always deserve to be treated well.”  He kissed Iggy on the cheek again and smiled as Iggy nestled their shoulders together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gladio, sitting upside-down on his BFF's couch while said best friend ignores his social cues: Yep, just two neurotypicals acting neurotypical. I've got this!


	3. Permanent Art

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gladio learns about the tradition of Shields getting tattoos and thinks about what sort of symbol he would even want to get on his body.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I ended up giving Gladio Galahdian-style braids (like Nyx wears) for most of his youth in this story. He does wear his hair short by the time he's fifteen, though, just like in Brotherhood.
> 
> Huge torso tattoos in Japan are a sign you're a yakuza, so why tf would a lord's son have one? I hope you like the answer I came up with.

He was thirteen when he learned about one of the most important Shield traditions.  “Gladio, Iris, come into the parlor with me,” their dad had said, and they’d gone.

“I want you both to know about a great Amicitia tradition,” he said.  He had just come in from a midmorning run, and he sat down on an ottoman facing away from his kids and took his t-shirt off.

“Bamut!” Iris yelled, her five-year-old approximation of an Astral’s name, and clapped her little baby hand right into the center of the seal.

Gladio’s dad laughed.  “That’s right, Iris: Bahamut.  It’s a Shield tradition to get a tattoo of something protective, to watch over you while you watch over the King.  I chose the Seal of Bahamut.”

“Sword!” Iris added.

“He _does_ have a lot of swords, doesn’t he?  Do they look like the kind Gladdy and I use?”

“Mmh… They’re worse,” she said with the grave seriousness of a small child.  Gladio and his dad both cracked up.

“How does it feel?” their dad asked.  “Is it bumpy or smooth?”

“Smoove!”

“Can I touch it?” Gladio asked.

“Go ahead.  I’m showing you because you’ll be getting one someday, though probably not such a big one.”

Gladio felt the tattoo on his dad’s back with his fingers.  If he closed his eyes, he could only barely tell there was anything there.  “Does it hurt as much as they say?” he asked.  He was good at handling pain, but he couldn’t pretend it was pleasant.

“Terribly for a few days, and then it fades over a week or so,” his dad said.  “I still get it touched up every five years or so, and I can’t say it’s the most pleasant experience, but it’s more than worthwhile.”

“Is it usually Bahamut?” His brain was full of questions.  Iris sat on the ground and hugged his leg so she could cuddle with the fabric of his pajama pants.

“I would say about half are probably Bahamut.  The only one I’ve seen in person, aside from mine, was your grandfather’s, and that was Bahamut holding His swords, preparing to fight.  It’s a few years yet until you’re even old enough to get a tattoo, but I wanted to ensure you had time to think about what you want.”

“Does it have to be in black?  Is it always on your back?”  He leaned down to pick up his sister so she wouldn’t trip him.

“My father’s was in full color,” their dad said.  “Fearsome-looking thing.  I decided I wanted something more subtle. And the spine is traditional because it connects to your whole body.”

“When do we get ours?”  All of Gladio’s questions felt pressing to him, but Iris had lost interest and was happy to be held with her chin on Gladio’s shoulder, facing away from their dad.  She grabbed a fistful of Gladio’s sleeve.

Their dad shrugged and put his shirt back on.  “For you, probably a few months before you take your oath and become Noctis’ Shield in a more official capacity.  For Iris, it’s going to be a bit longer, since Noctis will have to have a child first.”  He stood up and took Iris out of Gladio’s arms.  She tried to hold onto one of his braids, since putting them in her mouth was her new favorite thing to do, but she didn’t manage it.

That wasn’t entirely true, and they both knew it.  Gladio could die after he became Noct’s Shield, or his dad could die, and Iris would have to step up to the responsibility when she was twenty, just like Gladio.  But they didn’t talk about that when they could avoid it.

“I do want you to start thinking about what sort of image you’d like,” Gladio’s dad told him.  “It isn’t a decision you should make lightly, so I think five or six years of lead time is entirely appropriate.”  He winked and turned to take Iris to the kitchen for a snack.

.-._.-._.-._

“Mom, could you tell us the story about the eagles?” Gladio asked about half a year later, at bedtime.  He’d heard it plenty of times growing up, but he wanted to be sure he had it right.

She was just tucking Iris in, so it was the perfect time. Gladdy was sitting sideways on Iris’ rocking horse because their mom always told the best bedtime stories and he didn’t want to miss it.  “I certainly could,” she said.  “What do you say, little moogle?  Do you want to hear a family story?”  She smoothed the covers over Iris and leaned down to kiss her cheek.

Iris nodded, already half-asleep.  “Well,” their mom said, “Long ago in Galahd, we didn’t have any Lucis or any Niflheim.  Solheim had been broken up by the Astrals, and we were a free people.”  She petted Iris’ hair, freshly washed after a long day of teaching wrestling to the kids at her school unsupervised, seemingly on the dustiest part of the grounds.  “After Solheim, the Astrals created the Starscourge, a sickness of the land that takes the peaceful, good animals, who take only what they need from nature, and turns them into daemons, bloodthirsty monsters who poison any land they inhabit.

“When Ifrit created the Starscourge, Shiva created the Oracle, who can heal and banish the Starscourge.  All of that is important in Lucis, and also in Niflheim and Accordo.  But in Galahd, we have the eagles.

“Our ancestors tell us that, when Ifrit was creating the Starscourge, and spreading it over all the lands of Eos, He sent it to Galahd as a plague of rats.  Rats can do plenty of damage on their own – they can eat all your food or give you diseases – but these rats were sent with the curse of an Astral.

“You know that our Astral, Ramuh, favors no humans but us from Galahd.  As our Lord of the Skies, He blew a strong wind.  It had no thunder in it, but carried a hundred golden eagles, who ate up the rats.  For doing His work, Ramuh blessed the eagles that they wouldn’t become daemons, then or ever.  And that’s why eagles, especially golden eagles, are the protectors of all Galahdians, and why we keep mews in Galahdian temples while other Rahmuhnian temples keep aviaries.”

Iris was sound asleep.  Gladio took the chance to tell his mom, “I’m thinking of getting Ramuh instead of Bahamut for my Shield tattoo.”  He didn’t know how to tell her why it felt right, but he hoped she would understand without an explanation, even though he’d cut his hair into the Lucian style instead of the Galahdian braids he’d had as a kid.

His mom stood and walked across the room, then bent down to kiss him on the cheek.  “They’re both your family’s protectors,” she said.  “If Ramuh watching over you makes you feel safe, then that’s what you should get.  But you still have four or more years to think about it.”

.-._.-._.-._

“There’s something I need to tell you,” Gladio told his charge when he, Noct, and Iggy were alone in Noct’s apartment one evening.  Gladio had just turned nineteen and his father kept talking to him about the tattoo he should probably get soon, so it would be done by the time he came of age at twenty.  “And it’s… I understand if there are consequences.  It’s a really big deal, and it’s okay if you don’t want me to be your Shield after you find out.”

Noct’s jaw and shoulders were tense.  He stared at Gladio and said, “Gladio, you have to tell me right now: are you dying?”

Gladio snorted.  “No, Noct, I’m not dying.”  Noctis relaxed a little, but only a little.  “Nothing’s changed; there’s just… something my parents and I haven’t told you.”

“You’re a selkie and you and Iris have to return to the sea soon,” Noct suggested.

“Nah, nothing cool like that.  Good guess, though.”  He sighed.  Time to be serious again.  He had to say it now.  “When I was little, my parents noticed there was something… a little weird with me.  So they called in a specialist, who diagnosed me with sensory processing disorder.  What that means in a practical way, right now, is that sometimes I don’t hear my name for a couple moments, or it takes me longer to understand noises in general, especially words.  I get tired and upset when there are bright lights or loud noises, or too many people talking at once around me.  I don’t… always feel pain the way other people do, and that can be dangerous.  Those are all risk factors for you, and it would be irresponsible of me not to let you make your own decision about how much risk is acceptable.”  There.  That was all of it.  He'd told Noct, and while he didn’t want to tell Iggy that way, it was the sort of thing he needed to hear first in his role as Noct’s advisor.

“I mean…” Noct’s voice piped up, “It’s not like anything about you’s changed.  Has it?”

Gladio shook his head.  “No.  I’ve been like this since I was born, more or less.”

Noctis was being serious now, with the same expression and posture he used in Council meetings, but he still sounded skeptical and flippant when he asked, “So, what are you trying to say is the difference between you now and you when you fought assassins for me, or handled all my security at parties and festivals?”

“Noctis, what he’s asking us to consider is that he may not always to be able to maintain that level of performance,” Iggy cut in.  “He isn’t saying he’s incapable; he’s saying he’s less reliable than you might need.”  He looked at Gladio and Gladio wished he could read expressions through people’s eyes like a book character.  There were certainly a lot of emotions in Iggy’s expression, but Gladio couldn’t name a single one of them.

“Okay,” Noctis said, drawing Gladio’s attention away from Iggy.  “So, name one time you’ve let the ball drop in real life.  Because, like, I get it: you don’t realize how hard your workouts are, so you always get sore, and sometimes you space out a little during conversations.  But when has that actually had an impact on my security?”

“You’re going to have more social responsibilities starting in the next couple years,” Gladio reminded him.  “And even more when you’re King.  I can’t just sit in the Council chamber all day and then go to a party at night.  All my social energy will be gone.  So I really want you to take your time and consider it before you brush this off.”

“Does King Regis know?” Iggy asked.  “Also, does your father see this being a problem?  He knows the job better than any of us.”

“My dad’s pushing me to get my Shield tattoo,” Gladio said.  He looked back at Noctis.  “But I don’t want to start that and then find out you don’t want me as your Shield.”

“Your _what_ tattoo?” Iggy asked.

“Yeah,” Noct agreed.  “Wait, wait, wait.  Back up.  Tell me more about this tattoo.”

“My dad has a Seal of Bahamut tattoo,” Gladio started, and wasn’t able to follow it up with anything because Noct cut him off.  Iggy stood up and paced around the kitchen and dining room.

 _“The Seal of Bahamut!”_ Noctis yelled.  “I’ve sat in Council with him about _six hundred times_ and under his ultra-traditional robes, he’s inked up with one of _my family’s_ seals!”  He stood up, apparently unable to handle the news sitting down, but didn’t push his chair away from the table.

“It isn’t as exciting as all that,” Gladio assured him.  “It doesn’t come with some over-the-top story of youthful recklessness.  It’s an old Amicitia tradition.  Anyway, I don’t want to get one if I’m not really going to be your Shield.”  He did want one, and had not only had a design in mind for almost two years, but had saved up his Crownsguard stipend to commission an artist to design it, but if he got it, he would see it all the time, and if he was dismissed from Noct’s service because he hadn’t said anything, he wouldn’t want to constantly see the sleeves he intended to get.

“Going back a bit,” Iggy said, leaning against the counter, “It sounds like your father, who’s intimately familiar with both the role of a Shield and the impact your diagnosis has on your life, sees no reasonable barriers to your being Noct’s Shield.”  He came to sit with them again.  “As I’ve tried time and again to impress upon Noctis, there’s nothing as dependable as professional advice.  If a man who’s been a Shield for longer than any of us has been alive thinks you’re up to it, the only reason to second-guess him would be a personal difference between you and Noctis, and clearly, there is none.”

That was reasonable.  It was level-headed and thoroughly Iggy.  Gladio knew Noct’s answer hadn’t changed, but he said, “I still need to hear that from Noct.”

Noctis nodded.  “Yeah, you’re cool,” he said.  “For all those reasons Iggy said, since you won’t let me keep you on just because I like you.”

Gladio got out of his chair and went to kneel next to Noctis.  Noct extended his hand, and Gladio pressed his forehead to the back of it.  “My liege,” he said, hoping he sounded as serious as he felt.  “I vow to serve and protect you with all that I have, body and soul, to the end of my days.”

“Rise, Gladiolus Amicitia, Shield of the Kings of Lucis,” Noct said.  Gladio kept Noct’s hand in his as he stood.  Noctis was… starting to cry, actually.  He squeezed Gladio’s hand as tears welled up, and asked, “Did you get chills?  I got chills.”

“That was lovely,” Iggy interrupted with a dismissive tone that implied he couldn’t care less, “But you do realize you’ve just sworn allegiance to someone who isn’t King Regis, right?  Planning an insurrection, Noct?”

Noctis stammered.  Gladio couldn’t think of words that fit the kind of denial he needed.  “For my part,” Iggy continued, “My interpretation is that Noctis is in full support of his father, so that swearing to one is almost the same as swearing to the other, and Gladio knows that and would stop him for his own good if that changed.  Am I correct?”

“Yes!” they both blurted out at the same time.

“Good,” Iggy said.  “Treason sounds like it would be incredibly dangerous for very little reward.  I won’t tell if you won’t.”

They laughed about it and made “That’s treason!” jokes for the rest of the evening, and Gladio told his friends a story they’d never heard before about Galahd and the eagles and the Starscourge.


	4. The Eagle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gladio gets the first part of his tattoo. It hurts a lot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've gotten a tattoo, and it was fairly small, and it still hurt to wear anything that touched it, especially for the first couple days. People always talk up the pain of *getting* a tattoo, but the worse pain is the two or three days afterward, in the first stage of healing.

Gladio and his dad were welcomed into the tattoo parlor, sat down with an artist who came highly recommended, and offered water and coffee.  Gladio accepted the water.

“I’ve done some reading up,” the artist said.  His name had run right out of Gladio’s ears like water through a sieve the moment he’d heard it.  “It’s a beautiful tradition.  Some of the images we have go back over six hundred years.”  He’d done more research than Gladio, who had only recently looked up tattoo pain diagrams and only knew what his father had told him about the Shield tradition.  “So, what were you thinking of for your tattoo?”

“I think I want an eagle,” Gladio said, pulling out his phone.  “A golden eagle.  I, um.  I have a picture I commissioned.  It’s made to be a tattoo, so it should work.  I have it in my email, so I can forward it to you.”

His dad and the tattoo artist were both surprised, but the artist grabbed his laptop while Gladio forwarded the picture to him.

They both stared.

“It won’t be visible under formalwear,” Gladio pointed out.  “It doesn’t go up my neck, and the sleeves don’t reach my wrists.  It’ll be totally hidden.”

His father shot him a very flat look.  “Gladiolus, I know the way you dress, and it will be visible in every situation _except_ formal ones.”

“It isn’t violent or anything,” Gladio retorted.  “Just an eagle.”

“Why this tattoo?” the artist asked.  “Why not, say, a gryphon, like Shield Amarus, or a chocobo, like one of the early ones?”

“I’m Galahdian,” Gladio said.  He always tried to say it without any hesitance, so no one would try to diminish it by pointing out he was half-Galahdian and raised in Insomnia at the royal court.  “Golden eagles are an important protection symbol for us.  I commissioned it a year ago, if you’re worried I’ll change my mind.”  Bahamut protected the Kings of Lucis, and He would always be one of Gladio’s household Astrals, to the extent Gladio even believed the Astrals cared about humans at all.  The eagles were physical proof, a real miracle, and the resistance of birds to the Scourge was well known.

His father sat back, no longer scrutinizing the concept picture that was meant to show how all the parts went together.  “Well,” he said, crossing his arms, “No time like the present.  I think you’d carry it well.”

“What I’m thinking,” the artist said, opening a sketchbook and setting his laptop aside, “Is that we start with the outlines, and get the shape of it sorted before filling it in section-by-section.  It’ll cover a lot of space after the first session, but there’s less chance of mistakes due to misaligning the templates.”

“That’s great,” Gladio said.  He could handle some pain.

“How many sessions do you expect it to take?” his dad asked.

“I’ll need to practice the feather texture more to be sure, but I’m thinking one for outlines, one for each arm, and two or three for the body and tail,” the artist told them.  He looked at Gladio.  “That would mean covering a lot of space at one time.  It’s totally fine if you don’t want to do that.”

Gladio looked at his dad.  He _thought_ he could handle the pain, but his dad was the one who knew what a tattoo felt like.

“It’s up to you,” his dad told him.  “Would you rather have less pain more times, or more pain fewer times?  That’s what it comes down to, if you’re really certain this is your tattoo.”

Gladio turned back to the artist, looking down at the back of the man’s laptop while he made his decision.  “I think…  I think I’d like more pain, fewer times,” he said.  He looked up, at the man’s nose bridge like he always did now.  “I have a pretty good pain tolerance, and I’d like to get it done and healed as quickly as possible.”

The artist smiled.  “Then I guess I should set you up with some paperwork while I start printing this,” he said.

“Is there anything else you wanted to ask?” Gladio’s dad asked him.  “Anything about the tattooing process or how to clean and protect it?”

“No, I’ve researched that,” Gladio assured him.  He told the tattoo artist, “I have some good, unscented soap and lotion I use at home that should be gentle enough, and I know to keep it out of the sun.”

The requisite paperwork was handed to Gladio and he read every section of the liability agreement.  The shop seemed like a clean studio where artists worked in an unusual medium, not like the kind of place where someone was likely to get careless and spread blood diseases.  The stations looked like hairdressers’ vanities, some with doctors’ tables next to them, and there were finished and in-process paintings at one end of the room.  It wasn’t difficult to sign the paperwork and go stand by one of the tables.

The artist took his time transferring the pattern onto Gladio.  He was really careful to get it right so he’d be able to trace it easily, and showed Gladio how he was lining it up.  “And remember to breathe,” he said as he lay Gladio down on the work table, with pillows to help him lie in the right position.  “Keep breathing.  No passing out on me because you forgot to breathe.  And tell me if you need a break, alright?  We’re gonna be here a while, so I’m sure you’ll need a few.”

Gladio only had two tasks: breathe, and shift occasionally when the tattoo artist told him to.  So it was pretty easy.  It did hurt, and he asked for occasional breaks, but it wasn’t hard to keep up with the idle conversation of “what do you do in your free time?” and “tell me more about the eagles” that he was asked.  He answered slowly, but it seemed like conversation for conversation’s sake.  As far as Gladio was concerned, the shop had been recommended and he’d seen all the artists’ tattooing licenses on the wall of the front room, and the artist working on his tattoo had made sure Gladio was well informed about every step before starting to work on him, so Gladio had no reason not to trust him and would have preferred some music, but he guessed it was one of those things, like getting a haircut, where people felt like the result was out of their control unless they were discussing something unrelated with the artist.  Or maybe he was supposed to keep talking to ensure he breathed; that was also a reasonable possibility.  But breathing was still the primary task he’d been given, and the pain wasn’t nearly bad enough to make him forget that.

About fifteen minutes in, he’d told his dad he didn’t need anyone for moral support.  When they were finally close to finishing, he called his dad to pick him up.  He was used to working hard for his dad’s approval, whether he was on the training ground or the ballroom floor, so the last thing he expected was for his dad to gasp when he saw him, or go to hug him and stop and take his hand instead, or ask him to turn around so he could see the whole thing.

“It’s breathtaking,” his dad told him.  “You already look magnificent.  The color, the design, the style – everything about it is you.”

“That bit in the front will give you trouble when you’re falling asleep,” the artist told him.  He handed them both business cards and Gladio was happy to accept one.  It turned out his name was Arcus.  “Should only last a couple days.  Now, it’s too big to put a gauze pad on,” he pointed out, handing Gladio his shirt, “But let it rest for at least an hour before you wash it.  Don’t be worried if you wash some blood or ink off – that’s normal, and it doesn’t mean the tattoo’s fading.”

It made his skin ache, but Gladio pulled his shirt on so he wouldn’t bleed on his dad’s car upholstery.

What was the rest of the process?  His dad had already pulled out his checkbook to pay for the session, but Gladio was sure he’d forgotten something.

Oh!  Right.  He smiled and said, “Thank you for seeing me, Arcus.  You’ve already done some beautiful work.”  He felt a lot more comfortable as Arcus thanked him for the compliment and talked about how excited he was to help make Gladio a real art piece.

The car ride home was agony.  His dad bought him a hot chocolate so he could take some pain medicine as quickly as possible, but what he really wanted was for his shirt to come off.  Everywhere it touched him on his shoulders and back was in pain.  (The parts of his arms that weren’t covered hurt, too, just not as badly.)

Racing footsteps approached when they got home.  Gladio had been wondering if Iris would be back from her fencing lessons, and apparently she was.  “You got it?  You got it!” she yelled.  “Can I touch it?”

“No one gets to touch it,” Gladio told her.  “Dad, can I have my shirt off at dinner?  Since we don’t have any guests.”

“Yes, and I made sure you have older sheets on your bed, so don’t worry if it bleeds a little.”

Gladio started taking his shirt off right then and there, but was stopped when it _stuck._

“Oh, dear,” his dad said, probably in response to the faint whining noise coming out of Gladio’s throat.  “Yes, they do… weep a bit.”  He grabbed the bottom of Gladio’s shirt and started gently loosening it, working his way up.

“Ooh, I gotta see this,” Iris said, pulling out her phone.  “You’re making some great faces, Gladdy.  Noct’s gonna be so proud.”

Gladio raised his arms and leaned over so his dad could pull the shirt over his head.  “Put that away, Iris,” their dad ordered.  “He’s got a couple thousand tiny stab wounds; of course there’s some pain.”

Iris put her phone away and came closer.  “Is it supposed to be all red like that?”  She reached out and touched one of the lines on Gladio’s arm.

“Fudgesicles!” Gladio yelled, and flinched back.  “Iris, could you not?”

“Why was it sticking to you?” she asked, undaunted by either the yelling or the fake swear.

“Oh, that’s nothing,” Gladio told her.  “Remember when I got the cut on my face?  It wept for a couple _days.”_   He’d been able to put a nonstick pad over that, though.  He supposed he’d just have to be shirtless for a couple days to let his tattoo heal.  He didn’t want to think about how often he’d have to wash it.

Their mom walked in.  “Iris?  Are they home?  I heard voices.”  She caught sight of Gladio and stared, slowly covering her open mouth with her hand.  “Let me see it,” she said after a few moments, and walked slowly around him.  “A golden eagle,” she said when she’d come around to face him again.  “You got an eagle and didn’t even tell me?”

“I told you,” Gladio reminded her, smiling.  “When I was fourteen, remember?  I said I wanted Ramuh.”  He lowered his voice to add, “I did want it to be a surprise, though.”

His mom turned to his dad and said, “You knew for _hours_ and didn’t say anything.”

“Surprise,” Gladio’s dad said quietly, grinning.

“Is it finished?” Iris asked.  “Or are we gonna do this all over again in a month?”

“I’m getting the feathers filled in,” Gladio told her.  He turned to his dad and asked, “Can we have dinner soon?  I really want to lie down.”

“Of course darling,” his mom said.  “Iris, go put your fencing things away and we’ll all have an early dinner.”

“I just did,” she said.  “Dad said Gladdy can go to dinner shirtless.  If I get a big tattoo like that, can I walk around shirtless?”

“I imagine, by the time you’re called upon to be a Shield, you’ll have your own household and will be able to eat dinner in whatever state of undress you prefer,” their mom said.  “But, let’s see… Noctis is set to marry Lunafreya four years from now, so assuming they manage to have a child very quickly, and with the traditional age to begin guarding the Crown Prince or Princess being six years old, that would make you… twenty-two at the youngest when you’ll be called on as a Shield.  Certainly old enough to marry, but then, I imagine most Insomnian men would struggle to meet your baseline standards.  I was certainly unimpressed by the vast majority of them when I came here decades ago.”

“Is the medicine working?” Gladio’s dad asked quietly while his mom and sister despaired of the state of upper-class Insomnian men.

There wasn’t really a good answer to that.  He thought it was, but it wasn’t enough to make the pain easy to bear.  He said, “I’m worried about washing it,” since he’d already taken four times the dosage recommended on the bottle.

“I’ll help you with that,” his dad promised.  And that was reasonable, since he knew exactly how Gladio’s skin felt right now, but the thing Gladio’s brain stuck on was that he could get help.

He could get help.  He could ask someone to wash his tattoo for him.  He could even ask someone named Iggy, if he was brave enough.

They were in the dining room now.  Gladio sat carefully, straight-backed and not letting his back lean against his chair.  Moving his arms enough to eat made them hurt, and he wanted to go to bed but knew he’d have to let his dad clean the tattoo first.  Fortunately, when he skipped out on dessert, his dad followed him upstairs.

“That was very brave, today,” his dad said, leading him into the master bedroom.

“Oh – my soap – it’s in my bathroom.”

“Darling, tattoo soap is already unscented,” his dad told him.  “Same with the healing ointment.  That does have a scent, but nothing artificial.”

Gladio had told his dad about a million times that suddenly changing plans was hard on him, and also he didn’t want to smell some scent artist’s approximation of what a healing balm was “supposed” to smell like, so he said, “I’d still like to smell them first.”

“Fair enough.”  His dad pulled a cosmetics bag from under a sink counter and unpacked flannel washcloths, a bar of soap, and a tin of balm.  Gladio assumed everything else in the bag was medical supplies.  He smelled the soap, and it didn’t smell like anything.  The balm had a strong scent, but none of the artificial notes that made him miserable.  “Are they up to snuff?”

“Yeah,” Gladio said, and went to sit on the edge of the tub.

A soft knock on the door frame turned both their heads.  “Hey, um…  Can I watch?” Iris asked.  She wasn’t carrying her phone now, and she seemed sincere.  “Since I’m getting one one day, I mean.”

“That’s up to Gladio,” their dad said.

“I’ll be quiet,” Iris promised.

“Yeah, sure,” Gladio said.  “It hurts to move it, though, so I’m gonna make all kinds of faces.”

“Better or worse than your face scar?” his sister asked as she made herself comfortable on a footstool.

“Well, that was one reasonably clean cut and this is a million tiny puncture wounds, so I’m gonna say _more_ pain per square inch.”

Iris hissed in sympathy.

“Plus, the drugs are worse,” Gladio pointed out.

“Alright,” their dad said, breaking up the conversation, “I’ve got some warm, soapy water on here.  I’ll be careful, but there’s going to be dried blood, ink, and possibly skin flakes that need to come off.  Are you ready?”

Gladio gripped the edge of the tub.  “Yeah.  Go for it.”

It was unbearable pain.  Gladio focused on breathing, like he had while getting the tattoo, but it was harder.  He heard Iris exclaim, and his dad keep talking calmly, but he couldn’t think in words while his back and arms burned with pain.

He could imagine it took more than a couple minutes, but his sense of time was shot.  He could have sworn he could feel his heartbeat thundering through his back and shoulders, and all of his inflamed skin.

“Gladio?  Darling?  Oh, dear—run and get me some ice packs, would you?”

The words sounded vague and swimmy.  Gladio didn’t want to run anywhere, so he shook his head.

The pain didn’t start up again.  He wasn’t sure when it had stopped, become a constant throbbing instead of being aggravated in certain spots as his dad cleaned it.  He wanted the tattoo, wanted it so badly he didn’t have the words, but it was stupid to do such a large area when he’d been warned how hard it would be.  “Darling, if you can hear, your sister’s getting some ice for your back.”  He heard the words, then, several seconds later, he heard their meaning.  He nodded.

“So, you can hear me?” his dad clarified.  He nodded again.  “That’s good.  I’m glad you’re back, Gladio.  Here, let’s do this.”  He walked around to the other side of the tub, so he was in front of Gladio, and held out his fists.  “Seeing spots,” he said, shaking one of them, “Or not hearing words?” he asked shaking the other.  They’d done that a lot when Gladio was little.  Gladio tapped “not hearing words.”

His next choice was “focusing” or “dissociating,” and he tapped “focusing” as Iris came back.

“He was alright,” their dad said, laying a hand towel and then a bag of frozen fruit over each of Gladio’s shoulders.  “I was just worrying.  Here, Gladio, should I keep going or give you a break?”

Gladio tapped the hand that gave him a break.  He’d feel better when the ice packs started working.

When he was able to hear words as quickly as they were said, his dad and sister were discussing healing times for different injuries.  He said, “I’m back” loudly enough that they’d hear, but quietly enough that they wouldn’t interrupt.

Iris grinned at him.  “Welcome back!  Dad says there’s only a little more cleanup, and he only has to do some of the balm before you lie down.  All the rest can go after.”

“That’s great; I’ve been wanting to sleep since the tattoo got finished,” Gladio told her.  “Getting injured always takes a lot out of me.”

“Alright then,” their dad confirmed, “A touch more soap cleanup, a couple square inches of balm, and we’ll get you to bed.  And I really am sorry, Gladio; mine isn’t large enough for me to realize how difficult it would be for you.”

“’S fine,” Gladio said.  His dad finished cleaning his arms, dabbed some balm on his chest, the fronts of his arms, and the tops of his shoulders, and walked him to his room.

It was summer, so Gladio had no problem taking all the covers off his bed, even freshly made as it was.  He even flicked the ceiling fan on for extra coolness, and asked his dad to open the window a little while he lay down on his stomach.

“Is it bumpy?” Iris asked from directly above him, clearly taking his earlier permission as carte blanche to watch the entire process.  “How long do they take to go smooth?”

“It isn’t smooth for multiple reasons,” their dad told her.  “It’s raised because of the inflammation creating pressure from underneath, and it’s rough to the touch because the outer layer of skin has been absolutely mauled.  Imagine someone cutting lines into your shoulders and back with large-grit sandpaper.”  That… actually sounded like a really accurate description of how Gladio’s back felt.

“Ohhhhh.”  There was a should pause while Iris considered this new information, then, “Do the spaces in between the lines hurt, too?”

Their dad said something about the inflammation, but Gladio cut him off with, “If you touch it to find out, I’m murdering you as soon as I can get up.”

She poked a random spot on his head just to be contrary and asked, “How long does it stay this bad?”

“Only a couple days,” their dad said.  “Gladiolus, would you like all the gory details your sister is fishing for, or should we go to another room to discuss it?”

“You can talk about it here,” Gladio said.  He actually really wanted to know.

“Well, your skin has been functionally destroyed,” their dad said, “but it only needs a couple days to regrow and push all those damaged bits away, so a few days from now, just as it gets easier to touch, you’re going to start getting a truly shocking amount of skin and scabbing coming off, all of it in exactly that shade of brown you picked out.  It’ll seem to fade a little, but that just means your new skin is growing in and the skin that was shredded and absorbed some stray ink is coming off.”

“Does it peel, like a sunburn?” Gladio asked.  He was tired, but it was hard to really relax when so much of his newly tattooed skin was pressed against the bed, and his dad was still carefully dabbing balm onto his back.

“Yes, a lot like that,” his dad told him.  “A layer of damaged skin being pushed up all at once by a new, fresh, strong layer.  And about as much time to recover.”

“What do sunburns feel like?” Gladio joked.

“I _will_ poke you,” his much paler sister threatened.

“Nobody’s touching anyone, and Gladio, stop trying to get a rise out of Iris,” their dad decreed.  Gladio had his eyes closed, but he could _feel_ Iris’ shit-eating grin.

“How many times is he doing this?” she asked.

“It’s going to cover less space after future visits,” their dad pointed out, “But, if he decides to keep doing long sessions that cover large areas, probably four or five more times.  He’ll be able to care for it himself most of those times, though.”  He stroked Gladio’s hair a couple times.  “You’ll see.  It’s only a couple of days, then you’re perfectly fine.”

.-._.-._.-._

“What does it feel like,” Iggy asked him over the phone on Monday night, “that you got it on Friday and were still out of commission today?”

“Well, you do have to remember that I was stabbed,” Gladio pointed out.

“Not very deep.”

“I’ve got organ damage,” Gladio shot back.  After all, skin was an organ.

“Yes on a technicality.”  Iggy’s voice turned all soft and gentle when he asked, “Really, though, how are you?  I’ve asked you three days in a row and you’ve no idea how worrying it is that you haven’t answered me once.”

Gladio could just imagine him: curled up on the armchair in his bedroom, wearing a plain t-shirt and those ludicrously gay cotton-knit booty shorts that he only dared to wear as pajamas, smiling sweetly into the phone the way he only did for Gladio.  “What are you wearing?” Gladio asked instead of answering the question.

Iggy sounded 100% fed up with him when he answered, “What do you think?  I’m lying in bed in my underwear with no sheets.  If you’re planning to initiate phone sex, you should know that will make you responsible for my death by heat stroke.  Answer the question, darling: how are you?”

Gladio laughed at that.  “I’m the same,” he said.  “One hell of a summer.  And I’m fine, Iggs.  I’ll be back tomorrow.  My dad explained it to us, all scientific-like: I got my outer layer of skin absolutely fucking destroyed, so it just needed time for the new layer underneath to grow in and die so it’d stop being so sensitive.”

“Ah, I see,” Iggy said in the voice he used when Noct bullshitted him.  “So, that’s his seasoned opinion as a dermatologist?”

“Verbatim,” Gladio confirmed, grinning.  “Straight from the lips of Clarus Amicitia, Doctor of Dermatology.”

“Is that a degree?” Iggy wondered aloud, always a stickler for accuracy.  “I think a dermatologist is just a medical doctor with a specialization.”

“I mean, except the one you see,” Gladio joked.

“Gladio.  I swear to the Six, if you—”

“The one _you_ see could get a psych doctorate from dealing with your shit,” Gladio finished, grinning.

“Yes, thank you, darling, always nice to be reminded the entire world knows about my skin care troubles,” Iggy said.  He sounded professional, distant, the way he sounded when a topic was emotionally loaded and he didn’t want to admit it.  Time to back down.

“What?  No.  Babe.  I know about it because you tell me everything in excruciating detail.  You look just like a normal teenager, Iggs.  I know you never went to real school, but everyone our age has acne.  You look normal, babe.”  He even smiled while he said it to give his words an extra friendly feel.

“Well, I certainly do now,” Iggy said, still sounding tense.  “It takes three medications, special soap, and a woefully expensive imported lotion, but at least my face is acceptable.”

Gladio smiled all goofy and said, “Your face was always acceptable, love.  Cute, even.  Absolutely adorable, some might say.”

That earned him a laugh.  “Don’t stretch the truth, Gladio; I looked like a strawberry for a solid six months.”

“I love strawberries,” Gladio reminded him.  “And it’s a great comparison, because you’re so cute I could eat you up.”

“Gladio, that’s what you say to _children.”_   Iggy didn’t sound offended, though, not really, so Gladio had succeeded in loosening him up a little.

Plus, he had a great retort.  “Eat you out, then.  That’s just as good, right?”

_“Gladio!”_

Gladio laughed.  The movement made his back a little sore, but he couldn’t help it.

“I’m looking forward to seeing you tomorrow,” Iggy said like it was some kind of confession.  “Don’t come in if it still hurts, though, okay?  You _were_ stabbed.”

“Nah, love, they didn’t even get past the skin,” Gladio consoled.

“You have organ damage,” Iggy reminded him very seriously.

“Only on a technicality.  And I’ve been resting it really well.  It didn’t bleed at all today, just shed these big, weird, brown skin flake things,” Gladio said, trying to sound reassuring.

“It’s been _openly bleeding?”_ Iggy asked, raising his voice.  Frick, time to calm his boyfriend down again.

“They do that,” Gladio soothed.  “That’s just what injuries do.  It means there’s lots of blood flow so my skin has everything it needs to fix itself.  You don’t need to worry, Iggs; it’s just how bodies get all the scab-making goop to the outside.”  He’d need to talk with his dad about how Iggy could have Crownsguard first-aid training, but not know anything about wound after-care.  Not everyone had a dad who could teach them how to pack a wound, and as a Shield, and even just as a Crownsguard, Gladio couldn’t have a boyfriend who freaked out every time Gladio told him his injuries were healing normally.

Well.  As a lord’s son, he was pretty sure he couldn’t have a boyfriend, regardless.  He figured it was better not to ask.

“You should have told me, darling,” Iggy said.  “I would have brought you soup.  I might even have fawned over your brave injuries for a bit.”

“I have Iris here to do that,” Gladio told him.  “Can’t beat the service.  She reads to me, brings me food, and then she pokes the tattoo just to be obnoxious.”

“Oh, my fee’s much nicer,” Iggy told him.  “I have more of an invoicing agreement: I do require kisses in return, but only once you’re all healed up.”

Gladio grinned.  “I dunno, Iggy.  That’s sounding pretty steep.”

“Steeper than allowing her to poke your literal wounds?”

“How about this: you can have first dibs on being my soup runner the next time I get my tattoo done.  It doesn’t really hurt anymore; I’ve even been able to wash the whole thing myself today.  Been sitting up half the day instead of lying on my stomach.  There’s not much healing left to do.  But I’m getting all the parts on my shoulders done in a few weeks, and I’m gonna need help getting it cleaned.”

“That’s barbaric,” Iggy told him.  “Can’t they split it into more sessions so you have smaller areas healing?”

Gladio shrugged even though Iggy couldn’t see. “I’d rather do this fewer times, anyway.  No use getting less done on my back if I’m going to have to lie around for a couple days, anyway.”

“Remind me again why you got such a large tattoo in the first place,” Iggy said.  “As I recall, it’s the largest Shield tattoo in the past couple hundred years.”

“Our spines line up,” Gladio said.  “And our shoulders.  And its wings and my arms…”

“Yes, I understand the concept,” Iggy reminded him.  “I just think you could have picked a less painful tattoo.”

Gladio thought about that.  The tattoo he had now had been The One for two years, since a month or two after he’d first thought of the idea.  “I guess I could’ve gotten Ramuh’s seal… I considered it for a while.  There are other Ramuhnians outside Galahd, though.  As a family deity, or if you’re a Pantheonist.  Eagles are just Galahdian.”  He sat up; he should probably hang up and brush his teeth and shower soon.  “Plus, they protect against the Scourge.  We could all use that, even with the marriage coming up in four years.”

“Just ignore me,” Iggy counseled him.  “I just don’t want to see my boyfriend suffer.  A tattoo’s for life; you shouldn’t let a few extra tattoo sessions keep you from getting the symbol you want.  But I still wish you’d picked something smaller.”

Gladio smiled.  “It’s gonna be stunning, Iggy.  Stop you in your tracks.  Take your breath away.  And it’s gonna be part of my _skin_.”

Iggy sighed.  “Just don’t give me too many gory details and we’ll be fine.”  He let Gladio laugh and then said, “I’ve been thinking about coming out to my uncle.”  He was quiet and serious, with no hint of a smile in his voice.

Gladio waited for him to continue – to explain why, or how, or when.  When it became clear Iggy had finished speaking, he asked, “Any reason in particular?”

“I think he suspects,” Iggy said.  “I’d rather say it myself than be asked.  But… You know that lying to my uncle makes me feel ill.  If I do come out to him, he may ask if I have a boyfriend.”

“Oh,” Gladio said quietly, finally catching on.

“So I think it has to be a joint decision,” Iggy continued.  “I won’t say a word unless you’re ready to take the risk.  But, um… The clock may be ticking.”

“Thank you,” Gladio said.  “I’ll think about it.  I’ll see if I can scope out how my parents feel about it.  If I’m in the same situation, where they ask me if I have a boyfriend, can I tell them about you?”

“You can, but tell me immediately, so it’s me talking to Tellus about it instead of your dad.”  Iggy sighed again and said, “I wish it didn’t have to be so complicated.  I’m a _count;_ how is it this difficult?”

“Oh, rank makes it easier now?” Gladio joked.  “I would have thought it was the opposite.”

“It would seem that way,” Iggy agreed.  “Oh, I hear footsteps.  So, we can expect you back tomorrow, then?  You know Noct’s dying of curiosity.”

“I love when you go all formal like that,” Gladio said.  “I need to take a shower, anyway, though.  Jerk off and think of me shampooing my hair.”

“I really don’t think you understand all the particulars,” Iggy said, still using his business-voice.  “I’ll have to show you myself.”

“That a promise, Igg salad sandwich?” Gladio asked.

“Certainly.  See you then.  Bye.”

He hung up almost hoping Tellus would knock on Iggy’s door and ask if he was gay.  At least, if he knew, Iggy wouldn’t have to stop talking all sweet every time someone came down the hall.  If it got Gladio in trouble, that would be Gladio’s problem.

He showered, and his tattoo was still a little raw, but he was still able to clean it himself.  He brushed his teeth and checked his texts and didn’t have any emergency advisories from Iggy, so he figured it was just someone passing by in the hall.


	5. Expectations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gladio has trouble adjusting to high school. He and Iggy go for a walk in the park. Cw for hiding your grades from your parents because you feel like a Failure, and also that Gifted Student Feel where you've finally found a situation where you're at the same academic level as everyone else and suddenly realize you have no social skills.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gladio and Iggy are old enough to order vegetables when they eat out, but they're not old enough not to drench those vegetables in flavorful sauces. (Gladio's fourteen, Iggy thirteen.)
> 
> Most of the second half of the story didn't post the first time, and I don't know why. That's fixed now.

Gladio was the heir to the Amicitia title and fortune.  His mom had the final say in whether he inherited her title as well, and there was a long tradition in Galahd of titles being passed down to the most suited child or even a particularly dedicated retainer.  Regardless, the Amicitia line was a sure thing unless Gladio really dropped the ball and screwed everything up.

Unfortunately, he was currently in the process of screwing everything up.

In grammar and middle school, he’d taken special ed courses.  He didn’t _need_ them in the strictest sense of the word, but they helped him learn faster so he didn’t always feel like he was drowning under his work load.  His high school didn’t have special ed classes, so his parents hired a tutor.  For most subjects, that was plenty: he could get math and science topics explained to him when he had trouble with the problems in his homework; his tutor had endless recommendations for interesting, informative historical texts that encouraged Gladio’s love of reading while helping him engage with his History lessons; and they spoke in Gralean a lot of the time, even when they weren’t focusing on language studies.  His essays were getting stronger, even the first drafts.  And then there was Rhetoric.

It wasn’t his tutor’s fault, and Gladio suspected that the help he needed was way above Mr. Eruditio’s pay grade.  It was probably more in the realm of “things he should discuss with his speech therapist,” but he was pretty sure that she saw him as stupid-but-trying, while his tutor saw him as smart-but-overworked, so he didn’t want his speech therapist to see how smart he was in writing in case that made her realize just how bad he was at talking to people, and he didn’t want his tutor to see how bad he was at public speaking.

“Mr. Amicitia,” Mr. Eruditio said one day, “It looks like your Rhetoric notes are running a little short.  Would you mind timing out your presentation for me?”  He frowned over them as he looked them over for other flaws.

Gladio could feel his blood pressure pick up.  “Oh, have I missed something?” he asked.  “I can expand it.”  He might as well, since the notes were all he was going to get points for.

“It’s five minutes, right?” his tutor asked.  “That should be about three pages with this spacing.  Especially with the rate you speak.”

It was the perfect moment for Gladio to ask for help.  All he had to do was say: I speak pretty slowly in class, actually.  But the harder he pushed himself to say it, the more he failed at saying it.

“Are you alright?” Mr. Eruditio asked in Gralean.  “Was I rude?”

It was tempting to say he _was_ being rude, which was much less taboo in Gralean, anyway.  Gladio was two months into freshman year and failing Rhetoric, and his midterm report card was coming out in a couple weeks, and somehow he’d never thought anyone would ever actually let him ruin his future so completely.

But disapproval in the future was less daunting than disapproval now, so Gladio just said, “No, I’m just thinking about ways to expand it,” responding in Gralean to show he was on top of things.

.-._.-._.-._

His report card did come out, though, and the first thing his tutor asked was, “Is this accurate?”  Gladio was pretty sure he couldn’t speak if he wanted to, and he didn’t want to, anyway, so he nodded.

The next question was, “Why did you never ask for help with Rhetoric?”  It wasn’t asked in a sympathetic tone, but it wasn’t angry, either.  It was like a request for more information, but it didn’t seem possible for Mr. Erudito, who had been helping Gladio in all his subjects for two and a half months, not to be disappointed in him.

There was a _feeling_ he had whenever he tried to ask for Rhetoric help.  It was something like embarrassment, and something like dread, and something like desperation, but it wasn’t any of those things and Gladio didn’t know what to call it, and he hadn’t prepared for this conversation, anyway, so what he managed to say was, “I… didn’t want you to think I was stupid,” which came out in his smallest voice.  His speech-giving voice, coincidentally.

“How high of an F is it?” Mr. Erudito asked.  “Is it close to a D, or is it on the lower end?”  He sounded very calm.  Too calm.  Gladio was endangering his job, wasn’t he?

“Presentations are eighty percent,” Gladio mumbled.  “And my teacher is… I can’t talk in front of him.”

“You can’t talk,” Mr. Erudito repeated.  Gladio nodded.  He sighed.  “Alright.  Realistically, at this point in the semester, there’s no way for you to get anything other than an F unless there’s a very significant final project.  Is there?” Gladio shook his head.  “Okay.  What that means for you is that you have fully half a semester where nothing you do is going to make things any worse.  Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Gladio shook his head.  It sounded ominous.

“You are under no pressure whatsoever,” his tutor explained.  “You can use the remainder of the semester to your full advantage without having to worry that a poor presentation grade will compromise your grade for the rest of the semester.  And then, come next semester, you will have built up enough public speaking skills to succeed in the course.  Does that sound reasonable to you?  It’s hardly ideal, but you can at least prevent this situation in future Rhetoric courses, and the school’s graduation requirements do provide some leeway for failed or dropped courses.”

Gladio burst into tears.

He couldn’t quite say why it happened.  Everything his tutor was saying was good.  It wasn’t the apocalyptic mess Gladio had been fearing, Mr. Erudito didn’t hate him, and things might actually work out somehow.

He hiccupped uncontrollably, trying to catch his breath.

“Oh, dear,” Mr. Erudito said.  “Fourteen is rather… young, isn’t it?  I always forget.”

“I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you,” Gladio choked out.  “I kept trying.”

Mr. Erudito sighed.  “I just need to rearrange a few lesson plans, that’s all.  You’re the one with the hard work ahead of you.  Will you need help talking to your parents?”

Gladio nodded.  He still felt horribly guilty, despite the reassurances.

Mr. Erudito nodded.  “Alright.  We have a standing meeting on Fridays while you take your half-hour after-school break.  I’ll tell them you want to come to the one tomorrow.  We’ll talk to them together, and next week, the two of us will start on public speaking.  …I hesitate to ask if that’s a good course of action when you’re still crying from the last time I asked.”

That pulled a laugh out of Gladio.  He ducked his head a little in embarrassment and said, “It sounds good.  Thank you.”

“Some of the most brilliant legal and military minds of the past few centuries were miserably bad at public speaking,” Mr. Erudito told him.  “It isn’t some sort of death sentence; it’s a high school class.”

“Dad’s a public speaker,” Gladio pointed out.  “A really… really good one.”

“Yes, well,” Mr. Erudito said, frowning.  “You aren’t him.  You don’t _need_ to excel; as long as you pass the class, you can graduate.”

“I’m his _heir,_ Gladio reminded his tutor.  “I need to go to a good college.”

“Were you under the impression that colleges were going to reject you based on one weak subject?” Mr. Eruditio asked.  “That’s absurd.  That’s the sort of thing you think up when you’re fourteen and scared.  With your other grades, you can write your personal essay about triumphing over your fears through hard work and they’ll snap you right up.  One hiccup in your freshman year is hardly going to ruin the rest of your life; schools only like to imply as much to promote their own importance.”  He turned to his lesson plan binder and opened it to the History tab.  “Now, it’s no good dwelling on the past.  We have a plan of action for what to do about those grades, but I’ll need until Monday to get a good lesson plan together.  In the meantime, I’ve looked over your essay on the Galahdian Standoff, and I think the citations could be stronger.  That would seem to be the most productive thing right now.”

They worked on his History essay, then math, then Literature, and the F on his report card hung over Gladio’s head, but his tutor was all business-as-usual.

.-._.-._.-._

The next day was Friday, and Gladio was sorely tempted to not go home – to stop by the Citadel, or take a longer route home, or say he was going out with friends – but he knew Mr. Erudito would talk to his parents either way, and his dad always said it was better to show up for something unpleasant and do damage control than to stay away and let others represent you.  He had to trust that advice.

He was still removing his shoes and coat when Mr. Erudito arrived.  His tutor greeted him briefly and asked if he was ready to talk to his parents.  Gladio knew the answer was supposed to be yes, but he didn’t think he’d be ready even if he had a year to prepare.  He shook his head and Mr. Erudito said, “Better to rip the bandage off quickly, then.  Come along.”  He took Gladio’s coat and swiftly hung it up (everyone was so _fast_ at everything, no matter how much Gladio trained for speed at his wrestling and fencing lessons) and led Gladio to his father’s study, where his parents were already sitting together.

“Gladiolus,” his dad greeted him warmly.  “Mr. Erudito.  Please come in.”  Mr. Erudito shut the door behind him and Gladio was glad that at least no one would overhear the conversation by accident.  “Mr. Erudito said you had something to tell us, Gladio,” his dad continued, and then waited expectantly.

He hadn’t realized he was the one who’d have to say it.  It was hard enough when he thought Mr. Erudito was going to tell them and he was just going to be in the room.  He had no idea how to say it in a way that would make his parents less angry at him.

He had his book bag with him.  He opened it and reached down to pull out his report card, which was starting to get dog-eared, but was obviously the real thing.  He turned it toward his dad and pushed it across the desk.

“What’s wrong?” his dad asked, looking at the heavily marked paper.  “Your grades are—” His fingers pressed against the table where he was holding the paper in place.  His shoulders stiffened, and Gladio’s back straightened in response.

His mom looked over from her seat next to Gladio’s dad.  She looked up at him, frowning, and said, “Oh, _sweetie.”_

“I do need to accept some responsibility,” Mr. Erudito said.  “We’ve been focusing on homework, so I wasn’t asking after his test and presentation grades.  I’ve started looking up techniques for overcoming stage fright, and we start on Monday.”

“It’s not your fault,” Gladio said.  He didn’t know if he could speak to defend himself, but nothing about the situation was Mr. Erudito’s fault.  “I changed the subject every time you brought it up, or I made it about my notes and research instead of the speech part.”

Gladio’s dad was about to say something, but his mom spoke up first, saying, “We can see by his other grades that you’ve been an enormous help.  It’s easy to see how confident Gladio is while he’s working with you.  Anyway, we hired you primarily for homework and study help in the first place.  If you could let the three of us talk in private for a few minutes…?”

“Of course,” Mr. Erudito said, and stood up to leave.  The door opened and shut, and Gladio and his parents were alone.

After several seconds of hideously awkward silence, Gladio’s dad said, “We’re ready to hear an explanation any time, Gladiolus.”

Gladio hunched in on himself.  Maybe, if he really tried, he could turn into a black hole and he wouldn’t have to explain anything.

After an embarrassingly long amount of time, Gladio managed to say, “I didn’t want Mr. Erudito to know how stupid I am.”  His parents didn’t respond, so he clarified, “He didn’t know until yesterday.  He thought I was a regular student with a busy schedule.  I didn’t want him to know how bad I am at talking.”  His words came out slowly as he struggled to put them in an order that made sense.

“And what did you think was the purpose of first-year Rhetoric?” his dad asked.

Gladio shrugged and tried to be even smaller.

“Darling,” his mom said, obviously working very hard to stay calm, “You’re not stupid.  But, that aside, where was your speech therapist in all this?  I thought she was supposed to help you with all kinds of speaking.”

Gladio pulled his legs up under him on the chair.  “I’m already bad at conversations,” he mumbled.  “I don’t… want to be bad at every kind of talking.”  He looked up, gauging their expressions without looking at either of their eyes.  “And… I’m scared, if she sees my writing, she’ll thhhink I’m faking my speech problems.”  He ended that in a whisper.  Maybe it would have been better to let the adults discuss him, after all.  He dug his fingertips into the muscle of his calf.  Both their faces were the careful masks people cultivated at court to avoid showing emotion.  They were probably mad at him.

They took so long to speak that Gladio added on to what he’d said before.  If he was going to be their disappointing child, he could at least tell them _why_ he was struggling.  He at least owed them that.  “And Dad’s… Dad, and I have to be on the Council, too, when I grow up, and it’s like, the more I worry about being good enough to measure up, the more I can’t talk, or read, or sometimes even hear words.  It all shuts down, and I’m useless, and then Mr. Sermo tells me my time’s up, so I turn in my notes and sit down.”   His face was burning with embarrassment.  He just wanted one of them to speak, to say anything, just tell him how long he was grounded for and tell him to stop whining and get his shit together, and then it would be okay.

“You’ll have to go to any parent-teacher conferences,” Gladio’s dad said (quietly, probably not to him).  “You know I’m terrible at talking with people who deserve a broken nose.”

“Gladdy, you don’t have to be so nervous,” his mom said, and he had to work extra hard to hear her even though she’d used his name.  “You did lie to us, and we’re going to talk about that, but it sounds like we’ve been loading you up with expectations without even realizing.”

“We do want you to hold yourself to a high standard,” his dad cut in, “But not one that’s so high it’s unobtainable.  And I should be very upset if you tried to make your life match mine instead of pursuing your own talents.  Your grandfather had no idea why a Shield would want to pursue a law degree when his place in the Council is next to the King, but if I had tried to lead his life, I would have been miserable.”

“Your grades are good,” his mom pointed out.  “You have the one Rhetoric grade, but there are more A’s than B’s here and one bad semester on your transcript is hardly the end of the world.”

Gladio felt sick.  He was waiting for things to start going downhill.  He was waiting for his parents to tell him how betrayed they felt even though he knew they weren’t going to.

“Can I go to my room?” he asked quietly.  “I want to think about everything.”

“You can take your usual half-hour break,” his mom said, frowning, and Gladio took so long to turn the sounds into words that he missed the next thing she said.  He nodded anyway and stood up to leave.  It wasn’t so bad to put a time limit on a breakdown; he should be able to handle a tutoring session in half an hour.

His dad said something that took a moment to resolve into the sentence, “Let me walk you up,” and then immediately there was a hand on the back of Gladio’s shoulder.

It was like an electric shock, like he had managed to connect with Gladio’s nerve endings and send a pulse all the way through them.  Even the light brush of his sleeve over the back of Gladio’s shirt was too much on Gladio’s hypersensitive skin.  Gladio froze, his shoulders tense, feeling the sensation spread deep into his back muscles as he waited for it to pass.

And it did pass.  “My apologies,” his dad said as he twitched his hand away from his back.  The sleeve of his robe swung back and hit Gladio again, and he knew, he _knew_ it was a soft touch, just a little bit of fabric, but he flinched as it scraped across his back.

“’S fine,” he said, because it wasn’t the right time to tell him _again_ that touching him while he was upset almost always made things worse.  He had already given his parents the most disappointing news he could imagine; he didn’t want to reject the comfort his dad was trying to offer.  He didn’t want his parents to think he didn’t appreciate everything they did for him.

His dad walked him upstairs to his room, and didn’t touch him again, and didn’t try to talk to him aside from smiling warmly and saying something quiet before Gladio shut the door of his room.

He lay down on the floor, appreciating how solid it was, and rubbed the heels of his palms back and forth over the carpet for the staticky texture.  He let his feelings turn over and over inside of him until they had reduced and clarified into something he could almost handle.

He moved the sole of his foot across the carpet as he calmed down.  The repetitive motion helped him think.  He was going to have to perform his speeches in front of Mr. Erudito now, and maybe also his speech therapist.  If he was especially unlucky, his dad might try to help, too. Even with everything his dad had said, there was no way he wasn’t at least a little disappointed that his heir went entirely mute just because a teacher was watching him.

It did help knowing how long he had to be upset.  When there was a quiet knock on his door and Mr. Erudito asked if he was really alright to work on schoolwork, or if he maybe wanted to spend their session reading instead, Gladio found he really was ready to do some work, as long as it had nothing to do with assembling and presenting a cohesive argument.  They discussed Gralean grammar instead, and worked on math and science.  They agreed Gladio could handle his Lit and History homework in his own time over the weekend.

.-._.-._.-._

The next day, he finished up his two-hour wrestling class around noon and idly checked his phone before he changed out of his sweaty clothes, only to find he had twenty-four texts from Iggy.  He smiled and sat down to read Noct’s advisor’s newest interactive story.

_Ignis Scientia: An unplanned meeting of the Dad Squad is coming to order.  Currently in attendance are Tellus and Clarus, who are encouraging each other to day-drink._

He’d been eavesdropping, then.  Noct and his retinue took _one course_ in stealth techniques to evade capture or assassination, and Iggy used it to creep around servants’ hallways and closed doors.

Gladio wasn’t sure how the adults in their life hadn’t foreseen that, with how sneaky Iggy had always been, or if they’d suspected it would happen and just thought Noct’s safety was more important.

_Ignis Scientia: Clarus accepted the sherry._

_Ignis Scientia: “I needed to talk to you because I know Iggy’s a crafty one.  Gladdy isn’t remotely secretive, and he still managed to pull one over on all of us.”  I’m flattered for myself and enormously proud of you._

Gladio hunched over.  He really hadn’t wanted Iggy to know.  Iggy had passed his high school equivalence test already, and took classes at the Royal University.  But the only way to know what he thought was to keep reading.

_Ignis Scientia: Six, I should have kept my big mouth shut, shouldn’t I?  I’m sorry._

_Ignis Scientia: “We’re still talking about what to do about it.  We’re scared, if we punish the lying, he won’t come to us with *any* problems.”_

_Ignis Scientia: Tellus: “I hope you’re not asking for my advice.  Iggy’s kept me on a need-to-know basis since he was five.” The top strategic minds of His Majesty’s War Council._

_Ignis Scientia: Why on Eos would you want to be Clarus?  Your hair’s so much better!_

_Ignis Scientia: Now he’s threatening to beat up your rhetoric teacher for “making those *children* into laughingstocks instead of helping them learn”_

_Ignis Scientia: Tellus is doing his best not to laugh at him._

_Ignis Scientia: “The real issue is the betrayal of trust” THEY AREN’T EVEN HIS GRADES!!!!_

_Ignis Scientia: “His tutor says it’ll be fine even if this semester’s a bust” And yet this is a crisis of the soul that requires multiple drinks???_

_Ignis Scientia: “I just wish he would trust us,” your father says, the day after the event, sitting mildly buzzed in a room he hasn’t checked for eavesdroppers even though he knows I’m home._

_Ignis Scientia: Gladdy, if you’re stupid, I’m the Emperor of Niflheim._

_Ignis Scientia: Your efforts constitute the entire reason I was able to pass Oratory 103  last summer._

_Ignis Scientia: Your father has been lamenting your lack of self-confidence for a solid four minutes now.  Predictably, he blames his own parenting instead of either your schoolmates or contemporary achievement culture._

_Ignis Scientia: Honestly, school was 10x easier when I went to private tutoring and didn’t have to interact with my schoolmates anymore._

_Ignis Scientia: “I just want him to know it’s okay to fail as long as you pick yourself up and seek help.”  What school did your dad go to?????_

_Ignis Scientia: T: “I guess you’d better send him some of your earlier speeches, hadn’t you?”_

_C: “Shiva’s erect nipples, I guess I’ll have to.”_

_Ignis Scientia: 4/10 for originality on that oath._

_Ignis Scientia: I’ve read transcripts of the speeches they’re talking about._

_Ignis Scientia: This sounds spectacular; you’re going to have to link me._

_Ignis Scientia: Your mediocre speeches are delivered to bored teenagers and then encapsulated in a number out of 100.  His mediocre speeches were recorded on video for the public record._

_Ignis Scientia: Imagine the power play it would be to quote one of his earlier speeches, which he’s clearly embarrassed about, at a banquet._

_Ignis Scientia: Your father needs a friend to psych him up to show his own child some publicly available documents, but you, a teenager, should have told him about being repeatedly humiliated in private in front of as many of your peers as possible._

_Ignis Scientia: There was a study done that our brains make a chemical that calms children and adults, but stresses teens out._

_Ignis Scientia: So I’m going to go out on a limb and say being a teen is just really stressful._

_Ignis Scientia: “We’ve failed him” Izuniya’s pestilent toenails, it’s not like you died.  You aren’t even suspended.  I can see where you get your flair for the dramatic from._

Iggy was typing out something else, so Gladio headed him off with, _You know this is why you don’t eavesdrop, right?  You end up invading your friends’ privacy._

_Ignis Scientia: Small price to pay for omniscience._

_Ignis Scientia: I think your dad’s planning an embarrassing family movie night._

_Gladio: Also lol p sure I’m the dumbest person you know_

_Gladio: You’re just used to my particular brand of stupid._

_Ignis Scientia: You literally play strategy games to relax._

_Ignis Scientia: I feel stupid all the time, too.  Must be the company we keep._

_Ignis Scientia: Comparing ourselves to the nation’s most accomplished adults is probably no good for us._

_Ignis Scientia: Can I spontaneously come over to visit on Family Disaster Movie Night?_

_Gladio: Absolutely not._

_Ignis Scientia: Spoilsport. :P_

_Gladio: I have to shower and change.  Don’t get yourself in trouble._

_Ignis Scientia: Gladdy, I have extensive written evidence of my eavesdropping; if I get in trouble, it’s my own fault._

_Gladio: w/e, I’m getting back into real clothes._

He shucked off his clothes and went to take a shower.  He was almost as nervous to imagine what Iggy would write or overhear as he was to think about the compliment Iggy had given him.  Iggy liked his hair!  Iggy had some of the softest-looking hair in the world, and it was thick, besides, and he thought Gladio had good hair!  And that was extra exciting because Gladdy was finally starting to grow a mustache, and it was a hideous, scraggly, pathetic thing and he always worried the shadow from it looked weird.

He finished showering, dried himself off, and changed back into his street clothes, ignoring the conversations around him.  He only checked his phone again on the way out of the gym; he had fencing there in the afternoon, so he planned to find a nice sandwich shop or something to hang out in, or maybe go window shopping in the cute boutiques the Parkside district was known for.

_Ignis Scientia: Sage advice from my uncle: “Just go to the school and punch that rhetoric teacher in the face.  Then Gladdy will get kicked out and you won’t have to worry about him anymore.”_

_Ignis Scientia: You became a qualified physical therapist over the course of about a month for the sole purpose of helping Noctis.  I’m not letting you worm your way out of this by putting yourself down._

_Ignis Scientia: They’re discussing what well-behaved children we are.  While I eavesdrop on them and send you the juicy bits._

_Ignis Scientia: “I still can’t believe he would think he had to hide his oral exam grades from us” has your father ever been a teen?  Are we certain he had parents??_

_Ignis Scientia: “The only reason Ignis doesn’t lie to me is that he gets this pained expression on his face.”  See also: why I don’t tell him anything I might want to lie about later._

_Ignis Scientia: I’m glad he understands that it isn’t a goodness-of-my-heart situation, though._

_Ignis Scientia: C: You make him sound so manipulative._

_T: No, he’s a good kid, really._

_Ignis Scientia: Lies and slander._

_Ignis Scientia: “Do you think it could be his extracurriculars?  I balanced sports and school, but I never had to worry about ~*spontaneous muteness*~”_

_Gladio: Did he really say it with all that fancy punctuation?_

_Ignis Scientia: He didn’t dictate it specifically, but it was certainly there._

_Ignis Scientia: As you know, I’m the master of subtext._

_Ignis Scientia: Also, you have to remember he’s had at least two drinks._

_Ignis Scientia: And there’s no bold function for IMing._

_Gladio: Gotta bedazzle those bolded words._

_Ignis Scientia: You understand my soul._

_Ignis Scientia: If you’re done with wrestling, what are your lunch plans?_

_Ignis Scientia: They’re discussing tax law now; it’s boring._

_Gladio: Did you get your bike fixed?_

_Ignis Scientia: Why would you raise the topic of my secret shame?_

_Gladio: You showed up to the Citadel bleeding and covered in canal water._

_Gladio: I don’t think it’s a secret._

_Ignis Scientia: I would thank you to ~~~shut. Up.~~~_

_Gladio: *~~*~~*No.*~~*~~*_

_Ignis Scientia: I do want to meet you for lunch, though.  You have two hours, and I can be there in 15 minutes._

_Gladio: I was thinking bubble tea_

_Gladio: Especially if there are two of us_

_Gladio: You like Sweet Bubble, right?_

_Ignis Scientia: Ironically, yes._

_Ignis Scientia: Getting on my bike.  There in 15-20mins._

Gladio wasn’t Iggy, so he wasn’t the kind of person who spammed people’s inboxes when they weren’t there to read it.  Instead, he took his time walking to the boba shop.  He dawdled in a Tenebraean imports shop and passed by a book store he knew Iggy would want to visit with him.  He loitered outside the restaurant briefly, until Iggy showed up and locked his bike to a nearby bike rail.

They greeted each other and briefly argued the merits of fried squid vs. fried chicken for lunch, and Iggy got his unsweetened iced coffee that he swore was plenty sweet from the syrup on the boba.

“I really do apologize for prying into your life like that,” Iggy told him as they waited for their drinks.  “But I did figure, once I knew, it wasn’t like I could un-hear it.  So that’s why I stuck around to give you updates.”

“It’s fine,” Gladio said.  It wasn’t, really, but he knew their parents were friends and he knew Iggy was a chronic eavesdropper.  “Like you said, you passed Oratory, so Dad was probably gonna tell me I should get help from you, anyway.”

“Saying you need some help is different from saying you’re failing,” Iggy pointed out.  “How _do_ you fail a class?  I got a C on a final once and I almost threw up.”

“It’s all oral exams,” Gladio told him.  He could do without the humble-bragging, but Iggy said rude things by mistake all the time; he was probably genuinely curious.  Gladio wasn’t sure that made it any better.  “It’s like your oration class that you hated, but the teacher hates you and all the other students make fun of you outside of class.”

Iggy grimaced.  “Yes, I’ve heard of the reputation boys’ schools have.  I heard boarding schools are even worse.  I’m really enjoying my college courses because everyone is as tired as I am, or even moreso, so they all just want to do their work and be left alone, which is what I always wanted to do in classes.”  He dove forward as their drinks were placed on the counter and snatched them up, along with two straws.

“Wait, you felt nauseous over a C?” Gladio asked as they found a table.  “How does that even work?  It’s just a C.”  C’s passed.  They let you move on.  Even on a final, it wouldn’t make or break your grade.  Not for someone like Iggy, who would have already been passing the course.

“I don’t get C’s,” Iggy told him stiffly, turning his coffee over and over.  “I’m meant to be Noct’s advisor; I do have to put in an effort.”  He stabbed his straw through the drink lid.

“Sometimes, I work really hard and still get C’s,” Gladio told him.  “Especially now I’m in high school.  If people could skip five grades just by working hard, everyone would do it.”  He stabbed through the lid of his own drink.  “It’s okay, I guess.  Everyone already knew I was dumb; this just proves it.”

“Would you _stop?”_ Iggy scolded.  “You keep saying that!  It’s utterly ridiculous.”

Gladio looked down at his bubble tea.  “You really aren’t getting it, Iggy.  I’m not smart just because you like me.  I get bad grades sometimes, and I can’t afford to freak out about that because it would never stop.”

Iggy frowned for a moment.  Then he said, “You dad didn’t seem to think you were stupid.  He meets with your tutor, and he thinks you just had a bad teacher.  I had a bad professor over the summer, and you remember how hard the class was.”

Gladio smiled a little.  Iggy was still wrong about Gladio, but he was also right about the teacher being awful.  “There just aren’t any good public speaking teachers, I guess,” he agreed, and their order number was called, so he went up to grab their fried chicken and veggies, along with some napkins and two pairs of chopsticks.

Iggy was chewing on his boba when he got back.  Gladio broke his chopsticks apart and dipped a piece of chicken in mayo, and the conversation slowed down considerably while they ate lunch.

“I think I get a little of what you mean,” Iggy said quietly as he tried to saturate a fried broccoli floret with ponzu sauce.  “About being… bad at things even though you were trying.”  He lifted the broccoli out of the sauce and let it drip for a moment before popping it into his mouth.  Gladio didn’t say anything; if anyone knew how hard it was to speak up about something embarrassing, it was him.  “I’ve been… Let’s just say my etiquette teacher’s intended schedule and our actual lesson progression don’t line up.”  He picked up a piece of chicken.  “According to her, I ask repetitive questions in order to show off.  This is, of course, at the same time that I’m screwing up basic pleasantries.”

_“Such_ a show-off,” Gladio chided, rolling his eyes.  “Does that mean she hasn’t seen you actually showin’ off?  It’s pretty obvious when you do.”

“Gladio!” Iggy squawked, and for a moment Gladio was worried Iggy was going to throw his drink on him.  He was pretty sure Iggy considered it, actually, from the way Iggy looked at the sealed plastic lid.

But he kept looking down at it until he’d relaxed and started speaking again.  “I guess I never learned social skills?”  He looked up.  “They never mattered.  No one ever told me to, or gave me more than very basic instructions.  I think… I was meant to take an interest in socializing on my own, but no one ever told me.”  He fiddled with his straw.  “I would have done it if someone had told me to.  But they just told me to do school, so I did that instead, and now my etiquette teacher thinks I’m being smart with her.”

“Oh, man,” Gladio said without thinking, “School really messed you up, didn’t it?”

“School messes everybody up,” Iggy told him, and ate the chicken he’d been dipping in mayonnaise while Gladio wasn’t paying attention.

That was pretty much that, and they were both happy to change the subject when Iggy saw a cute dog outside.  They kept to lighter topics, like how well Gladio had done in wrestling practice and Iggy’s plans for his upcoming Art History essay.  They even took a walk through the park that gave the Parkside District its name.

If there was anything Gladio hated, more than Rhetoric, maybe even more than Niflheim, it was crushes.  Iggy had been his friend since they were little, and Gladio knew exactly how to talk to him, in theory.  In practice, the sight of Iggy in short-sleeved plaid, smiling almost smugly as he strolled under the trees, made Gladio go all stupid, even if it was a very different feeling from being watched by his Rhetoric teacher.  Fortunately, Iggy was happy to talk at length about everything he’d been learning in his classes.

“What’s it like only having four classes?” Gladio asked, but what he wanted to ask was: will you sit on the grass with me and kiss me?

“It’s strange,” Iggy told him.  “I’m not used to it.  I keep getting this feeling like I should be doing my math homework, even though I’m not taking math.”

Gladio smirked.  That was cute.  _Iggy_ was cute.  Gladio had an overwhelming urge to hold Iggy’s hand, but he didn’t do it.

He hated it.  He would absolutely have held Iggy’s hand any time he felt like it when they were kids, but now it felt like a dead giveaway of his enormous crush.

Boners could rot in hell, too.

Eventually, they had to walk back.  Gladio walked Iggy most of the way back to his bike and saw him off with a wave and a friendly, “Ride safe!  Don’t fall into any canals!”

Iggy laughed at that and protested that he’d been looking forward to doing some fishing, and Gladio smiled so hard on his way back to the rec center that he was sure he was glowing.  Iggy had a great sense of humor, but it could be a little tough to land a joke just right for him if you weren’t good with puns.  But he’d laughed at Gladio’s teasing, and walked with him for an hour, and he said earlier that he liked Gladio’s hair.  Gladio ran his fingers through his hair a few times, like he wished Iggy would do someday.  He wasn’t sure he’d ever felt more excited heading into sports practice.  Seeing Iggy almost made up for the terrible weekend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two bros, walkin' through a grassy park. Five feet apart 'cause they're Not Gay!


	6. Expulsion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gladio reaches his breaking point with a bully at his school.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This isn't as polished as I would like, but I've been posting every weekend and I do try to be dependable.
> 
> In high school, my boyfriend was half Colombian, and when he responded to being pushed around in the locker room, he was the only one who got suspended. Shoutout to all the kids who've been treated like garbage by administrators because of your race or any other marginalization.

“So, like… Do you never smile because you don’t know _how,_ or do you just want everyone at school to know you hate us?”  Frick.  He hadn’t heard Saevus sneaking up behind him.  He did like to use passing periods to be an asshole, though.

Gladio didn’t let his face change.  He said, “I know how.  Guess I just don’t see a need, most of the time.”  That was… really not a good comeback.  At all.  Those kind of comments always caught him off-guard.

“Is that what you say to your little cripple-prince?”  Someone shoulder-checked Gladio into a wall, but he wasn’t about to turn around and see who.  Could’ve been a mistake, anyway; the halls did get crowded.

“I’ll tell Noctis you asked after his health,” Gladio said.  The walk to the science wing was impossibly slow; he wasn’t getting out of this conversation for a While.

“Ooh, you didn’t like that, did you?  Hey, _Gladdy,_ why don’t you like it when I call your little boy-toy a cripple?”

He couldn’t think of an answer that wouldn’t provoke the other boy, so he didn’t say anything, just kept shuffling forward as quickly as the surrounding foot-traffic would allow.  Sure enough, that prompted another subject change: “Do you smile for him when you’re sucking his royal dick?”

“He’s twelve,” Gladio said, not willing to rise to the insult.  Anyway, he’d kissed Iggy just a couple weeks ago, hadn’t he?  So there wouldn’t be any point in pretending he didn’t like boys.  “You tryin’ to tell me you have sex with preteens?”

Saevus was moderately good at getting under people’s skin, but he absolutely _could not_ take an insult.  Gladio shouldn’t have said anything; he’d prompted another subject change, much worse than the last: “So, does the King know you’re in special classes?  Good ol’ Reggie, putting his son’s life in the hands of some dipstick who doesn’t even know how to add.”

“I dunno, Saevus, I got a pretty high B on that last trig test.”  A high B he’d only gotten because he was allowed to take the test in an empty room that didn’t sound like twenty pencils scratching at the same time.  “How’d you do?”

That had done it, probably.  Saevus was famously mediocre at math.  Gladio was fine at it, now that he got to take tests in a quiet room.  It never helped to piss off bullies.

“Guess your prince _can_ use you for something, then,” Saevus said.  “Say, y’know when the teachers call on you and you go all frozen and stupid?  Does that ever happen in battle?”  Oh, he _wasn’t._   “Are there ever, like, assassins coming toward you, but you stop moving, like, uhhh, sorry those assassins got you, Highness, I’m just too fucking dumb to protect you.”

Gladio had turned around before Saevus was done with his sentence.  “Say it again!” he yelled.  He was vaguely aware of how his voice echoed in the hallway, a sign he was way too loud.  He didn’t care enough to think about lowering his volume.  “Tell me to my face you think I’d be selfish enough to put someone in danger like that!”  The was space around them now, a mix of boys who wanted nothing to do with the brewing fight and boys who were sticking around to watch.

“Ooh, touchy,” Saevus said, grinning.  “Do you kiss the Prince with that mouth?”

“Too busy kissing his feet!” someone yelled from the group of onlookers.

Saevus laughed at that and said, “Maybe the Prince is even dumber, so he doesn’t even notice!”  And then he didn’t say anything else because Gladio had hit him in the face with the heel of his palm and broken his nose.

“I challenge you,” Gladio said as he shook out his hand.  “I _fucking_ challenge you.  Your weapon of choice.  To the blood.”

“What in Shiva’s name is going on out here?”  Frick.  Yep.  That was the problem with being loud: it attracted teachers.  “You, what’s-your-name: did you hit him?”

Gladio straightened.  “He wanted me to,” he said, still seething.  “He insulted me, the King, and Prince Noctis, intending to get a rise out of me.”

“Is that _broken?”_   The teacher came to scope out Saevus’ injury.  He turned back to Gladio and said, “Well, you certainly rose to it, young man.  You can go straight to the office.”

The next half-hour was a complete education in a process his sister was probably pretty familiar with.  Gladio sat in the office, his book bag tucked neatly behind his ankles, and listened through the too-thin walls as Saevus’ nose was set.  “Could I get your last name?” the receptionist (?) asked, wincing at the yelling from the next room.

“Amicitia,” Gladio told her.  “My dad’s at Council, but I think my mom’s home today.”  He looked up at the clock on the wall.  “Yeah, it should be late enough that she’s home.”  He shifted in his seat, uncomfortable staying in one place.

“Thank you.”  She looked something up in a thick binder, then turned back to him just as she was reaching for the phone.  “You didn’t get hurt, right?” she clarified.  “Just…”

Gladio nodded.  “Yeah.  I landed a hit, and then it was over.”

She nodded, obviously unable to figure out what kind of expression she should make.  He wanted to say: you have it backwards, I’m not the one who started this fight, you’re safe with me.  The words stuck in his throat.

“Good afternoon, Lady Amicitia,” the receptionist said, smiling, and Gladio remembered Iggy telling him and Noctis that smiling made your voice sound more approachable, even over the phone.  “My name is Hazel.  I’m the registrar at your son’s high school…  Oh, yes, that’s right: we did.  I remember meeting you now.  Anyway, I’m calling with some kind of unfortunate news…  No, he’s fine, but he’s gotten into some trouble…  Well, I don’t know any of the details, but it seems he hit another student.  We’re going to need you or your husband to come in…  Yes, I asked right before I called you, and he isn’t hurt, but the other boy did have to have the nurse set his nose…  I really can’t answer that for you, but if you come to the school, you can discuss it with Mr. Acroasis…  Yes, he’s right here…  Of course, ma’am.”  She gestured at Gladio to come to the counter she was sitting behind, then handed him the phone, saying, “It’s your mother.”

His face had to be bright red; it was burning hot.  He took the receiver and said, “Hi, Mom.”  The only thing he could imagine that would be worse than talking to his mom right then was talking to his dad.

“Hi, sweetie.”  She sounded rushed, like even saying hello was taking too much time.  “I hear you broke another boy’s nose?”

“I…”  There wasn’t anything he could say to that that wouldn’t sound like a weak excuse, so he just said, “Yes.”

“Alright.  Did you use your de-escalation training?”

“I didn’t think of it.”  He knew he should’ve ignored the whole thing; trying to get the upper hand with bullies never worked.

“Gladio.  I need to know: are you the one who started it?”

He was sure Saevus would say the same, but… “No.  He was making fun of Noctis, and I got upset.  He didn’t hit me, but… I don’t think I started it, either.”

There was a short pause that made Gladio wince in preparation for whatever his mom was about to say, and then, “I don’t think the school will see it the same way.  And I think I’ll need more information before I know how I feel about this.  I’ll be there in fifteen minutes, sweetie.  Love you.”

“Love you, too,” Gladio said, and handed the receiver back to the registrar to hang up.  He sat down again, his arms and legs drawn close to himself as if making himself look small and meek would change the fact that he’d just lashed out at someone a few minutes before.  It was easy to forget at his Crownsguard training, where everyone around him was an adult and self-selected for strength (and people who couldn’t meet the physical standards couldn’t join), but Gladio was pretty big, and strong for his age, and had been learning a variety of armed and unarmed martial arts since he was a toddler, first to help him with coordination when it became clear his motor skills were messed up, then later to help him master the skills he would need as a Shield, and also because he loved it.  It sounded silly to say out loud, but fighting someone one-on-one was personal and intimate in the same way ballroom dancing was, and Gladio didn’t mind taking hits the way some people seemed to, which was all to say that he didn’t want to look intimidating to the registrar, but he probably did, anyway.

Saevus’ dad arrived first, and tried to yell at Gladio and guilt him before he was herded into the nurse’s office by an over-polite registrar who clearly didn’t want to be the peacekeeper in the parent-student conflict.  When the nurse’s door was closed, Gladio thanked her.

A few minutes later, Gladio’s mom swept in like a force of nature.  He knew she’d had a Royal University Library brunch that morning, and she was still dressed for it in a teal blazer over a deep purple dress that wafted around her.  Her Galahdian braids were new and immaculate, swept up with the rest of her hair into a Lucian-style bun.  Gladio felt smaller than ever.

She didn’t spare him a second glance, just went straight to the registrar and said, “I’m Gladio’s mother.  Is there anything I need to sign, or anything I should know?”

The registrar, amazingly, didn’t seem intimidated at all by Gladio’s mom, just calmly said, “No, ma’am.  The principal should be able to see you in a few minutes, though.”

Gladio’s mom nodded, thanked her, and went to sit down next to Gladio.  She turned so her body was facing him and said, “Tell me everything.”

Gladio hadn’t been holding up very well.  No matter how mean Saevus had been, it was still Gladio who escalated it to a fight.  The guilt was overwhelming.  He shrank in on himself even more and mumbled, “It was during passing period.  I know I shouldn’t’ve done it.  Shouldn’t’ve… risen to it.”

“You said he goaded you into it,” his mom reminded him.  “What sorts of things did he say?”

“Dumb stuff,” Gladio told her.  “At first, it was easy to ignore, like he asked if I don’t know how to smile and said I suck Noct’s dick.  But then he asked if I ever freeze up during fights and put Noct in danger, and called him stupid, and I know he was just tryin’ to get a rise out of me, but I got really mad and I hit him.”

His mom sighed and put an arm around him, and he hunched his shoulders in even though she could easily reach around him.  Now that Gladio stood level with his dad, she was one of the few people who were still taller than him.

“I still don’t think you should’ve hit him,” she admitted.  “But I also don’t think you could reasonably be expected _not_ to hit him.  Did he really ask if you know how to smile?”  Gladio nodded and she pulled him even closer against her.  “Makes me want to re-break his nose.  Has he done that before?”

Gladio wasn’t able to answer because the principal came into the room, looking under-dressed compared to Gladio’s mom in a casual suit, and said, “Lady Amicitia, I’m glad you’re here.  Please, both of you, come into my office,” and then walked toward the nurse’s office to say something similar to Saevus and his dad.

Gladio sat in one of the plain wooden chairs in Mr. Acroasis’ office and watched Saevus as he came in and settled down.  His nose was still a little red and inflamed, but had obviously had a potion applied after it was set, and was healing well.  That was good, at least.

“Lady Amicitia, Dr. Saevus, thank you for coming in,” Mr. Acroasis said as he went to sit behind his desk.  “Mr. Saevus, is your nose healing alright?”

Saevus nodded and said, “Yeah.  It’s a lot better.”

Mr. Acroasis nodded, satisfied, and said, “Good.  Now, I’d like to get this whole thing sorted out _today,_ so let’s get started.  Mr. Amicitia, you punched Mr. Saevus in the face?”

Gladio shook his head and tried to keep his voice loud enough as he said, “No, sir.  I don’t remember clearly, but I think it was a palm strike.”

Mr. Acroasis looked surprised and upset, which meant Gladio had missed something.  He looked at his mom because she would know what was wrong.

“Gladio,” she said quietly, “He was verifying _that_ you hit the other boy, not asking how you did it.”

Gladio said, “Oh,” and looked down.  Then he said, “Yes, I did hit him.”

Mr. Acroasis wrote something down and said, _“Thank_ you,” like the delayed answer was because of Gladio being intentionally rude and not the result of a miscommunication.  “Why did you do it?”

“He—you know I’m the Royal Shield of Prince Noctis?”  It was a mouthful to say the whole title, but it was important.  Mr. Acroasis nodded.  “He asked—er, said—um, I guess he did ask—if I ever froze up in fights the way I do when teachers call on me in class.  Which means—I mean, what he was really saying—He was implying that I put my own pride above someone else’s life.  And also he said Prince Noctis and King Regis were too stupid to know how useless I was.  So I got really upset.”

Mr. Acroasis paused with his pen over his notepad.  He set his writing hand down on the desk, looked up, and asked, “So, he insulted someone _else_ , and you got so angry, you broke his nose.”

Gladio nodded.  “I mean, he tried insulting me first.  But he always does that, so I’m pretty good at ignoring it.”

“Excuse me,” Dr. Saevus said.  “What are you trying to say about my son?”

“Um… The truth?” Gladio guessed.  “I… kind of already screwed everything up for myself when I lost my temper; what’s he gonna do, bully me _more_ now that I’ve shown him I fight back sometimes?”  Under Dr. Saevus’ glare, he added, “I mean, we’re not debating whether this happened.  I broke his nose.  That definitely happened.  We’re talking about why now.”

Dr. Saevus kept glaring at him for a moment, then turned to Mr. Acroasis and said, “This boy is slandering my son.  Venan would never say things like that.”

“Want to hear some more things your son definitely didn’t say?” Gladio asked sarcastically.  “Maybe have a heart-to-heart about how he absolutely never pushes me into walls during passing periods?”

“Gladdy, you never said,” his mom said, sounding shocked.

“Yeah, well,” he shrugged, mumbling, “I didn’t want to kick up a fuss.  I’m… always butting heads with the school, or screwing up my grades, and I didn’t want it to sound like a scapegoat.  Y’know?  Like, oh, don’t blame _me_ for my problems; other boys are a little rude to me sometimes.”

His mom sighed and asked, “Did he push you today, when he was insulting you?”

Gladio shook his head.  “No.  His friends did, but he didn’t.”

“Why would you believe him?” Dr. Saevus asked.  “Venan, what really happened during passing period?”

“I just came up to say hi,” Saevus said.  “Maybe I made a couple jokes, but…  Just friendly jokes, y’know?  And, like… Maybe I give him a nudge on the shoulder sometimes…  I thought that was what friends did.  And then he punched me, and challenged me, and…  I dunno, I thought it was fine, but then he just suddenly _turned_ on me.”

Gladio couldn’t keep the disgust off his face.  “You were never friendly to me,” he said.  “And I’m not friends with people who call me a ‘Galahdian behemoth’ after PE.  My _friends_ don’t come up to me and ask if I never figured out how smiling works.”

“You called him a _what_ in the locker room?” Gladio’s mom asked.  Oh, frick, he’d really done it now.  It wasn’t that his mom was bad at debate or anything – if anything, she got better at it when she was more passionate – but Gladdy just wanted everything to quiet down and de-escalate, and that definitely wasn’t going to happen now.

“Lady Amicitia, is that really an appropriate tone to take with a teenager?” Mr. Acroasis asked her.

She gaped at him.  “I’m sorry, are you just pretending you didn’t hear that?  This boy called _my son_ a behemoth, and you want me to just sit by and be _civil?_ Should I, perhaps, have brought in some of the political cartoons from when I was engaged and newly married, that showed my husband cuddling up with a behemoth in lipstick?”

“We’re talking about the specific incident today,” Mr. Acroasis said.  Gladio didn’t want to be there, didn’t want to be in the room at all.  It was too much.  “Whatever may have happened previously, one of my students has assaulted another one of my students with no physical provocation.”

“You know, I’m not a lawyer,” Gladio’s mom said, which always meant she was about to out-lawyer someone, “But, when I hear about cases where people have technically broken a law, but there’s debate about whether the circumstances should allow it, it seems like the question that’s asked is: were their actions reasonable?  In other words, when faced with someone who constantly tried to wear down his sense of belonging, and sometimes did try to provoke him physically – which I notice you’re conveniently ignoring just because Gladio didn’t require a trip to the nurse’s office – could Gladiolus be reasonably expected not to respond?  I agree that, in the context of only the insults he heard today, he overreacted.  But as a response to several months of harassment, can we actually expect a sixteen-year-old not to defend himself in some way?”

“I think there are very few situations where breaking someone’s nose is an appropriate response,” Mr. Acroasis said drily.  “In the context of a high school, violence can only be acceptable when there’s no other option.”

“Gladdy,” his mom said, “What techniques have you used to get Mr. Saevus to leave you alone?”

She wanted him to talk now.  Great.  “Mostly… Moooostly ignoring him,” he mumbled.  It was difficult to get the right words, and his tongue felt slow.  “Sometimes…  Words ‘re hard… Sometimes I ask him to leave.  To.  Go away, I mean.  Or…  Try saying something… rrrrrude back at him, but that usually makes things wworsssse.”  He wanted to tuck his head between his knees.  He didn’t want to see anyone or anything, but he knew he had to sit up.  Had to act like an Amicitia.

“Not the _most_ honorable route,” his mom pointed out, “but certainly not a violent one.  How long has this been going on, Gladdy?”

He shrugged.  “Freshman year?” he guessed.  It couldn’t have been that long after they’d met; they had Rhetoric together freshman year, which was the most embarrassing class Gladio had ever taken.

There was a pause that probably meant the adults were making expressions at each other.  Gladio looked at the detailing on the bottom edge of Mr. Acroasis’ desk.

“I’d like to go back to the part where boys are pushing my son into walls and teachers haven’t noticed or done anything,” Gladio’s mom said. “How do they do it, Gladdy?  Is that in the locker room, again, or after school…?”

“Mmmmmmostly during passing period,” Gladio said.  He really didn’t want to have to speak anymore.  “So it seems like an acci- acc- a mistake.”  _Accident._ That was the word he was looking for.

“The boy’s so upset he can barely speak, but yes, naturally, he’s the villain of this encounter,” Gladio’s mom said.

“Do I need to remind you that he broke another boy’s nose?” Mr. Acroasis asked.

“Do I need to remind _you_ that _he called **my son** a behemoth_?” Gladio’s mom yelled back.  Gladio ducked his head a little.  He hated yelling.  Hated any kind of conflict.  He studied the wood grain that was in his line of sight.

“That was hearsay,” Dr. Saevus cut in.  “That’s one boy’s word against another, and Mr. Amicitia has every reason to make himself sound like he has the moral high ground.  I don’t believe Venan would ever use that kind of insult.”

“I’m not going to sit here while you call my son a liar at every possible turn,” Gladio’s mom said.  “Gladiolus, come on; we’re leaving.”  She leaned forward to grab her purse and stood up.

“Mrs. Amicita, if you don’t sit down so we can sort this out, I _will_ determine this situation to be unsalvageable and be forced to expel Mr. Amicitia from this academy,” Mr. Acroasis said.

“Just as well,” Gladio’s mom shot back.  “I don’t want him to spend another minute in this kind of environment.  Make sure we never meet in public; I’ll spit in your face as soon as look at you.”  Gladio finally untangled himself from his chair and half-walked, half-tripped to where his mom was standing at the door.  “Have fun in your miserable little hell-hole, Mr. Acroasis.  We won’t be returning.”  She put a hand on the back of Gladio’s arm and they left the principal’s office.

His mom was all smiles when she greeted the registrar again.  “Hazel, it was so nice to see you in person again,” she said.  “Is there any way you could do me a favor?”

“What do you need?” she asked.  Gladio couldn’t look at her, or read her tone at all.

“Could you send Gladiolus’ records to Amicitia Manor?  I’m withdrawing my son from the school.  I know it’s rather sudden, but I think that will be healthiest for everyone involved.”

 “Oh.  Um… I certainly can,” Hazel told her.  “We do retain a copy, and they’re going to be signed by Mr. Acroasis and Mr. Amicita’s teachers before they’re sent out.  Um… And I think there’s a charge for early withdrawal if there isn’t a qualifying circumstance.  Is it…  Bereavement?  I guess it wouldn’t be moving…”

“It’s because your principal and a good portion of your students are biased against Galahdians and that isn’t a healthy environment for my son to take lessons in,” Gladio’s mom said.  “We’ll figure out the fees later.  The important thing is his school records.”

Gladio saw Hazel nod out of the corner of his eye.  “I’ll have them sent out within the week,” she said.  “I’m sorry you’ve had such a… difficult experience with the school.  Good luck on the rest of your schooling, Mr. Amicitia.”

Gladio nodded.  He just wanted to be gone.  What if Mr. Acroasis or Dr. Saevus tried to follow them out?  They had to _go._

“That’s very thoughtful of you,” Gladio’s mom said.  “Now, we really must be going, but I’ll look forward to receiving those papers.  You have an excellent day.”

His mom swept out of the room, with her long dress and her broad-brimmed hat and total confidence that she was doing the right thing.  Gladio practically tripped over his own feet just trying to follow her.

The halls of the school he’d been attending for two and a half years felt new and foreign.  He couldn’t get his bearings.  He followed his mom to her car, feeling like the ground was moving under him, and buckled himself into the passenger seat.

His mom said something with an upward inflection, like a question, and he nodded because usually that meant she was asking if he was alright, especially after something big like that.  He looked at the handle of the glove compartment and couldn’t look at anything else because he needed to keep his focus narrow.  The radio played softly, but he didn’t know how many songs played, and he couldn’t have said if the drive home took ten seconds or ten hours.  He was expelled.  He hurt someone, hurt him really badly because he was exactly the kind of uncontrollable monster Saevus and his friends always said he was, and now he was expelled.  And his mom knew that everyone hated him, and even she hadn’t been able to figure out a better solution than taking Gladio out of that school entirely.

He came out of his funk somewhat when his mom started speaking to him.  “Well, that was less than ideal,” she said, keeping her voice neutral.  Gladio ducked his head even lower.  “Oh, there’s no reason to look so upset, Eaglet,” she continued. “They’ve been awful to you since you got there.  This was just the last straw.”  After a few moments of Gladio not responding to her, she added, “I know you would have toughed it out for all four years.  And I know you would have thought you were doing it for Dad and me, so we wouldn’t have to worry about you or our reputations.”  She sighed.  “I know how much it takes for you to be goaded into hurting somebody.  I couldn’t let you stay somewhere where that was your only option.”

“Hhhhow… Do I tell Dad?” Gladio asked, still not able to look up.

“You don’t,” his mom told him.  Her voice was deep and soothing.  “I will.  It was my decision, so I’m the one who’s going to talk to him.”

“Why did you… decide that?” Gladio asked.  It was like trying to talk through a mouthful of ice, clumsy and slow.

“Because I saw that none of them were remotely distressed that boy called you a behemoth,” his mom said.  “There was no respect whatever for what you went through.  We weren’t going to have a reasonable adult discussion where we said: this boy is a shitty teenager who provoked Gladio, and while it’s Gladio’s responsibility not to hit people, it’s also pretty awful to provoke someone so badly they don’t feel they have any other choice.  The conversation we were going to have was: this Insomnian boy has never done anything wrong in his life, ever, and Gladio is big and does Crownsguard cadet training in the summer and comes off as a little strange sometimes, so Gladio is getting suspended while the other boy doesn’t even get this incident written down anywhere.  And, when they saw how much trouble they could get you into by provoking you like that, you would never have heard the end of it.  So I did the reasonable thing and I got you away from that terrible school that you always hated.”  She didn’t really give him time to respond before she added, “I did the adult thing and I made the sensible decision even though I knew you wouldn’t be happy with it.  You don’t have to think it was the right decision, and you don’t have to defend it to anyone if you don’t want to, but I don’t want you to think you have to let people treat you like you aren’t as important as other people.  That’s all.”

Gladio didn’t say anything.  After a minute or so, she turned up the radio a little, and soon after that, they were home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gladio's super grounded btw. He did break another kid's nose.
> 
> Next week, there's going to be a chapter about Iris and school!


	7. Self Defense

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gladio picks Iris up from school after she gets caught (again) fighting on school grounds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the inconsistent posting! I did a lot of visiting over Labor Day Weekend, which left me pretty tired!

Gladio was barely ever called on to pick Iris up from school when she got in trouble, but their mom was out of town doing relief work in Leide and their dad was in a War Council meeting, and Gladio wouldn’t have to be by Noct’s side until school actually got out, so it fell on him.  He’d barely even been to her school, except for a couple plays and sporting events, but fortunately it was easy enough to find the office.

“Hey, Iris,” he said gently, smiling at her, when he came into the office.  “How are you doing?”  He sat next to her and quietly asked the receptionist, “Could you tell Principal Rasa that Miss Amicitia’s brother is here?”  She nodded, so he turned his attention back to Iris.  He wrapped an arm around her shoulders.  She leaned against him and drew her legs up onto the seat of the chair.

Gladio glanced around for other kids her age.  Finding none, he said, “Hey, Moogle.  It’s alright.  I’ve got you,” and he squeezed her closer for a moment.  “What’d they bring you in for this time?”

“We were doing rolls,” she said quietly.  “We even did it on the grass, so it’d be softer.  You know I don’t pick fights.”  Her voice was soft.  Her voice was never soft at home.  Where was her twelve-year-old bravado?

“I know, Moogle.  I understand.”  He wanted to offer some better kind of comfort, but what else could he say?

“Mr. Amicitia, thank you for coming so quickly,” said a woman who’d appeared in the hallway out of the room.  She must have been Mrs. Rasa.  Her dark hair was drawn back into a simple twist and she wore a blouse and skirt with a cardigan.  She looked like she was tired of dealing with preteens and their bullshit every day of her life.  “If you and your sister would join me in my office…?”

Gladio clapped his sister gently on the shoulder.  “Alright, Iris.  Are you ready?”

She shook her head, but stood up and led the way.  Gladio carried her school bag; it was the least he could do when she was so upset.

“I’m very sorry to bother you, Mr. Amicitia,” Mrs. Rasa said.  “I know the demands on your time must be very pressing.”

Gladio shook his head.  “Not at all, Principal Rasa.  My charge is in his junior year of high school, so he doesn’t need me until the end of the school day.”

“I’m glad you have the time to spare,” she said tightly.  “I know this would be more appropriate if your parents were here, but I really am determined to reach some sort of truce with your sister – today, if possible.”  She held the door for them as they walked into her office, and then sat down behind her large desk while Gladio and Iris took the seats in front of it.  She looked at Iris and asked, “What actions could the school reasonably take that would make you stop?  I’m not interested in expelling you and creating some sort of martyr situation, but with such a large group of students swearing up and down that you’re the best thing about this school, I have to assume your endgame involves more than just adding a wrestling unit into gym class.”

“I don’t teach wrestling anymore,” Iris said, still quiet and serious.  She looked straight at Mrs. Rasa.  “The most useful thing for the students here is self-defense.  There are only a handful of girls who want to know how to throw a punch, but a lot of them want to know how to block one.”  She drew her knees up in front of herself.  “Amelia and Sania got catcalled the other day.  They said it made them feel safer to talk about the things I taught them.  I just want everyone to feel safe.”

“Posture,” Mrs. Rasa snapped, and Iris sat correctly in her chair.  “Miss Amicitia, most of the girls at this academy are high-born young ladies like yourself.  They may worry, but they’re unlikely to be attacked.”

That was… patently wrong.  “I’m sorry,” Gladio said to preface his rudeness, “Have you _met_ aristocratic teen boys?  Because I know exactly how they talk about girls, and it’s horrifying.  I have friends who have secret codes with their chaperones that mean ‘don’t let me out of your sight with this guy.’  If anyone needs unarmed defensive training, it’s the people who are going to be pushed into romantic and social situations with the most entitled, self-centered people in Insomnia.”

Principal Rasa looked at him for a moment and then said, “Mr. Amicitia, I can see you have some very strong opinions about this— _posture,_ young lady; this is a school, not a gymnasium—but I also need to consider the parents of the other girls.  Many of them feel that acting too aggressive would reduce their daughters’ marriage prospects.”

“Ma’am, that is the worst excuse I’ve ever heard for wanting your daughter to be defenseless,” Gladio told her frankly.  “Hopefully, with just the three of us here, we can admit they want their daughters to be vulnerable so they don’t feel like they have any choice but to do the things their family pushes them into.  And I would suspect that they don’t want to know which of their friends would start sporting bruises if their daughters were able to defend themselves.”

Principal Rasa looked shocked.  She said, “Mr. Amicitia, we don’t discuss those topics here.”

“That’s why my endgame also includes better counseling services,” Iris said in a rush before Gladio could respond.  She slowed down to add, “They need more restrictions on what they can say to our parents.  Like what high schoolers have.  Then the girls would trust them more.”

The principal sighed.  “Miss Amicitia, there are laws,” she explained.  “I can’t single-handedly change the applicable therapy laws.  We do have adequate staff for the demand we see from the student body.”

“Yeah, because the girls who have problems with their parents know they can’t go,” Iris told her.  “So they talk to me instead, about how scared they are that they’re ruined forever and will never be able to marry.”  She didn’t look that upset, but Shiva, what a thing to have to think about when you were twelve.

Mrs. Rasa sighed.  She looked down at some papers on her desk, then asked, “If I were to talk seriously to Ms. Ludis about adding a self-defense unit to the physical education program, would you stop teaching it unsupervised?”

Iris’ face lit up and her back straightened.  “Really?  You’d do that?”

“You’re right,” the principal said.  “We all know you’re right.  I’ll see what I can do to pass it off as trying to encourage our students’ interests.”  She flipped through the papers in front of her.  “Speaking of gym class, though, why have you been skipping it?  Is that part of your protest of our programming?”

Iris ducked her head and said, “It’s actually, um… It’s because I hate tennis.”

“Miss Amicitia, you aren’t required to _like_ your classes; you’re just obligated to attend them,” Mrs. Rasa reminded her.  She looked tired.

Iris hesitated, and slouched a little to the side.  She very carefully said, “I hate it so much that, after I’ve changed and gone to History, I’m still thinking about how bad I am at it.  The unit’s almost over, anyway.”

“Iris, you should’ve said,” Gladio told her softly.  “I’ll help you figure something out when we get home.”

“I’m not worried about your fitness,” Mrs. Rasa said, “Since I know you do multiple sports outside of school hours, and I do understand why you might have trouble asking for help in a class where you normally excel.  So, to get everything started on the right foot, I’ll research self-defense seminars we can send Ms. Ludis to so she’ll be able to train your classmates if you’ll stop teaching it during lunch and talk with her about ways to get your grade up.”

Iris nodded.  A moment later, she said, “Yeah, I can do that.  I’m sorry I had to be a nuisance for so long.”

“I do have to send you home,” Mrs. Rasa told her.  “You were seen pushing another student to the ground, and the rules are very clear about what has to be done.  You can go to study hall with Miss Mores for the rest of the week; I despair to think of how you held yourself before you took her etiquette class last year.”

Iris snapped to straight-backed perfection again as something clicked into place in Gladio’s brain.  He couldn’t help staring at his sister as her life flashed before his eyes: her love of contact sports, which they shared; her mediocre posture, which she corrected every time she was reminded and then quickly forgot; her love of moogles and the way she held onto her plushies even now that her friends had given up all but their most important stuffed animals; the way she distilled social customs into straightforward rules and procedures they could both follow.  Iris had never complained that her classrooms were too loud during tests, or that she couldn’t follow along with her lessons when her shoes were tied too tight, but he knew she didn’t hesitate to cut the tags out of all her clothing before it had even been washed, and she’d complained about bras for almost the entire first semester of sixth grade.  She sat upside-down frequently ever since he’d shown her how fun it was.  Gladio kind of couldn’t believe he’d never put the pieces together before.  He’d been sure that, with him diagnosed years before she was even born, their parents would have noticed if Iris was like him.  But he’d never even thought to consider it, himself.

Iris was thanking Mrs. Rasa and standing up, so Gladio stood up to.  He waited for a lull in the conversation, then said, “I really appreciate what you’re doing for my sister.  I understand why that change is difficult, and I really think it’s going to be a good decision for your students.”

She looked pointedly at Iris and said, “Yes, well.  It would seem it was long overdue.”  After another quick glance at Iris, who was putting her backpack on, she added, “I’ll do what I can about the counselor privacy situation, of course, but I won’t make promises I can’t keep.  I’ll need to read up on what is and isn’t legal for children under fourteen.  You understand.”

Gladio smiled at her, hoping she didn’t think he was just some asshole who came to her school and yelled about the abuse high-born girls were vulnerable to.  “Of course,” he told her.  “We appreciate the effort, regardless.”

Iris had her backpack on, so she said goodbye and thanks to Mrs. Rasa, then left the school with Gladio.

“That was a good meeting,” Gladio pointed out as they walked to his car.  “Your friends are gonna be ecstatic when you tell them what happened.”

“I still got sent home,” Iris countered.

Gladio grabbed her in a loose hug and kissed the top of her head.  “We can wrestle later if you want to blow off some steam.”

They didn’t say anything else until they were in the car.  When Gladio had gotten out of his parking spot and didn’t have any more tricky maneuvering to do, he said, “I was thinking about something.  Watching you forget your posture all those times in a row… It kind of reminded me of how I used to be with eye contact.”

He wasn’t looking at Iris, but he still saw her shift in his peripheral vision.

“I was just wondering if you’d thought about it,” he finished, but quickly followed with, “Also, where are we going?  Are we going home?  Do we need to get some victory ice cream first?”

“Victory ice cream!” Iris cheered, so he took her out for dessert.  He didn’t push the SPD issue, but he was watching her for it now.  He also knew he was supremely unqualified to notice it in others, since the thing that made it a disability was the difference from neurotypicals, but he… He was good friends with her, wasn’t he?  He knew people with siblings they weren’t that close to, but he and Iris had always gotten along perfectly, and enjoyed a lot of the same activities.  She made sense to him.  That probably counted for something, didn’t it?

He should probably talk to his parents.

Regardless, he tried to keep his energy up and stay positive while he and Iris had ice cream.  It was no fun getting kicked out of school, even just for the end of the day, even if you knew you didn’t deserve it.  Instead, he asked how Iris’ friends were doing and how she felt about taking self-defense in PE.

And, as it turned out, he didn’t have to talk to his parents at all because Iris came down to dinner that night, after spending her time after school doing homework and playing on her computer, and said, “Hey, Mom, Dad, just so you know, I have SPD like Gladdy,” and she smiled that cocky smile she had, like her declaration was the beginning and end of the conversation, and quickly shaved a piece of potato into her mouth so she couldn’t answer questions without being rude.


	8. Diagnosis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gladdy, a three-year-old, is introduced to a new grown-up named Dr. Neuros.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The cutest chapter! Please enjoy!

“Gladdy!  Gladiolus!  Oh, it takes a moment sometimes,” Mama said to the stranger she was talking to.  “Gladdy?” Oh, oops, she meant him.  He turned away from his blocks and toward Mama and the other adult.

“Gladiolus, this is Dr. Neuros.  She’s here to play with you and talk with you for a little while, okay?” Mama asked.

Gladdy nodded.  Maybe Dr. Neuros was a new nurse?  The nurse he’d always had was just fine.  He didn’t know any kind of adult who liked playing with kids except parents and nurses.

Dr. Neuros knelt down like his parents did when they said something important.  She was short, like a nurse, and all her features were round and friendly-looking.  She had light skin and dark hair, like Daddy and a lot of the people in the City.  She said, “It’s nice to meet you, Gladdy.  What are you building?”

Gladdy said, “Oh,” and then remembered that adults he’d never met usually didn’t like it when he said things.  He turned back to the blocks and showed her the towers he was building.

“Oh, wow,” Dr. Neuros said, smiling.  “Those are taller than you!  You must be very good with blocks.”  Gladdy shook his head and looked at Mama.  She should be saying something by now.  Something that would keep Dr. Neuros from being bored, because he was pretty sure he was as boring to adults as they were to him.

“Do you not like talking very much?” Dr. Neuros asked, and Gladdy looked at Mama even more urgently; she would know what to say.

“I’ll be over here,” Mama said, picking up a book from the playroom table and going to sit in one of the grown-up-sized chairs.  “You can answer her questions, Gladdy.  But, if you can’t, that’s fine too.”  She opened up _The Little Red Chickatrice_ and started reading.

“I like blocks a lot,” he said.  His words were too loud; he’d been holding them in so long that they came out like fireworks, too fast and too loud.

“Blocks were one of my favorite toys when I was young,” Dr. Neuros told him.  “What do you like to do with them?”

He liked… To stack them.  Which was why he was stacking them.  This was the part where Mama or Nurse was supposed to say that he liked to build them into big towers, but Mama kept reading and didn’t say anything, and Nurse wasn’t in the room anymore.

Dr. Neuros needed an answer.  Mama said it was okay if he couldn’t answer, but he knew what to say, just not the words for everything.

He finally found a word.  “Towers,” he said, and then, “I make towers.  Really tall.”  It all felt wrong; adults never did more than say hi and then leave.  Why was Dr. Neuros still here?

“That sounds fun,” she said, still smiling.  “Can I watch?”

Gladdy nodded, relieved that she didn’t want to talk anymore.  He started on a new tower, this one from mostly-green blocks.  With a stranger watching, it felt bad every time they fell down.  That was how block stacking always went, and why it felt so good to stack them high, but he didn’t like being watched by someone who’d never seen him do it before.

And she did watch him.  Mama had said Dr. Neuros had come to see Gladdy, but he hadn’t expected her to stay for so long.  He finished his block stack and turned to Dr. Neuros, smiling with pride, and she was smiling, too.  She asked, “Is it done?” and he nodded.  She looked it over and said, “It’s very tall and straight.  You did a _very_ good job on it, Gladdy.  Now, do you mind if we leave the blocks for a few minutes and play a game?”

Gladdy looked at her.  He looked back at his block towers.  If Dr. Neuros was so impressed by his block stacks, why did she want to do something else so soon?  He nodded, but he was suspicious.  Then he remembered Nurse saying you had to look at the person you were nodding at, so he looked at Dr. Neuros and nodded again.

“Let’s sit at the table for the game,” she said.  She gestured to a chair, which Gladdy sat in, but she knelt on the other side of the table.  She reached into her purse and pulled out a bag of marshmallows.

“I have some marshmallows here,” she said, as if there was any way Gladdy wouldn’t notice them.  “We’re going to play a game with faces.  When you get the answer right, you get a marshmallow.”  She pulled a deck of cards from her bag and started laying them face-up on the table.  “I want you to put together all the cards that have the same person on them.”

It was a very hard game.  No two cards were the same; they all showed people making different faces.  Gladdy studied them carefully and did his best.  While he played the game, Dr. Neuros wrote in a book.

“Are you done?” Dr. Neuros asked when he’d finished sorting the cards.  Gladdy nodded.  “Alright, let me look at them.”  She looked at the stacks of cards.  Gladdy looked at the marshmallows.  “Very good, Gladdy,” she said, and opened the bag of marshmallows to pull one out and give it to him.  He squished it a few times with his fingers, then put it in his mouth.  “Now, let’s play a different game,” she said as he finished his treat, laying the cards out on the table again.  “You still get a marshmallow if you win, but this time, I want you to group them by what they’re feeling.  All the people who are feeling the same thing should go into the same pile.”

She wrote in her book again while Gladdy sorted the cards.  It was a very difficult game, but if Gladdy got all the groups right, Dr. Neuros would give him another marshmallow.  That was plenty of reason to focus.

He sat back and nodded when he was done.  Dr. Neuros reached toward one of the piles of cards and looked up at him, and he nodded again.

He looked over at Mama.  She was still reading _The Little Red Chickatrice._   He looked at the marshmallows and hoped he’d won the game.

“I like these groups you came up with, Gladdy,” Dr. Neuros told him, but she didn’t give him a marshmallow.  “Could you tell me how you sorted them?”

Gladdy nodded.  Dr. Neuros had laid the cards out in clusters.  He pointed to the group of people with neutral expressions and said, “Bored.”  He pointed to the happy ones and said, “These ones are happy.”  And he pointed to the sad and mad ones and said, “Something’s wrong.”

Dr. Neuros nodded and said, “Those are excellent categories, Gladdy.”  And then she did give him a marshmallow, and he ate it while she wrote some more.  When he was done with the marshmallow, she said, “Your mama tells me your daddy teaches you fighting sometimes.  Could you show me some of what you know?”

Gladdy shook his head.  The playroom floor was hard, so he wouldn’t be allowed to practice there.

“Really?” Dr. Neuros asked, and she seemed surprised.  “Why not?”

When adults asked questions with that voice, it meant you were supposed to do what they wanted.  But Gladdy was _sure_ he wasn’t supposed to practice fighting in the playroom.  Nurse had said so, and he was pretty sure Daddy had, too.

He looked over at Mama.

“He’s right,” she said, looking up from her book.  “We don’t do any tumbling or sports in the playroom.  Gladdy, could you show Dr. Neuros where the practice room is so she can see what you’ve learned?”

Gladdy nodded, happy that he hadn’t messed that up.  He led the way.  Mama and Dr. Neuros followed him, talking about adult things.  Gladdy focused on other things, like climbing down the stairs.  Nurse got mad at him sometimes for being so slow at stairs, but the steps only came up to her ankles, and they came up to his knees, almost, and the railing was pretty high besides.

When they got to the practice room, Mama said, “Why don’t you show Dr. Neuros your basic forms, Gladiolus?” so he nodded and did them all in the order Daddy had taught him to do, including the yelling.  He fell down less than usual, too, which he was happy about.

Dr. Neuros thanked him, then turned to Mama and said, “I think I’ve got a pretty good idea of what’s going on,” which was weird because she was the one telling everyone what to do, so it was probably one of those weird things grown-ups said that was about something so far in the past it probably shouldn’t mean anything anymore.

“Gladdy, would you like to stay here and practice or go back to the playroom?” Mama asked, leaning down so she was easier to see.

“Playroom,” Gladdy told her.  He could play blocks again, or maybe play Council with his stuffed animals.

“He does seem to have some amount of delay with recognizing faces and emotions,” Dr. Neuros said.  The tone she used wasn’t as friendly anymore, so she had to be speaking to Mama.  Gladdy didn’t bother remembering anything she said, since it wasn’t for him, but he did hear it.  “But I don’t think that’s going to be one of his primary challenges.  It’s the same with attentiveness: his focusing skills are maybe on the low end for his age, but not _such_ a concern they merit a diagnosis if they continue to develop.  But, from what you’ve told me, with needing his clothes to be soft and his food to be a certain way, and with his difficulty hearing his name and producing words on his own, and especially with the way he knocks his blocks over and falls down during play, and the amount of care he took going down the stairs, it’s all very consistent with a developmental delay called sensory processing disorder.”  They’d reached the stairs again.  Gladdy took them on all fours because, while Nurse always scolded him for that, Mama usually didn’t mind.

He liked Dr. Neuros, even all serious like she was now, but he still didn’t try to pull any meaning from her words, just enjoyed the sound of them.  “You might find that his senses are out of proportion.  You said he cries when his clothing has tags on it, but I just watched him fall down several times, which you would expect to be worse, and he didn’t seem very bothered by it.  Also, he would take a moment after I asked him something to respond to it, and like you said, he often doesn’t recognize his name.  He might have trouble turning the words he hears into ideas he understands, so he doesn’t bother with what he considers ‘background noise.’  It’s very common with this family of disorders.”  Gladdy reached the top of the stairs and walked toward the nursery with Mama and Dr. Neuros falling behind.

“What can we expect when he goes to school?” Mama said.  She used the deep voice that usually meant she was talking to adults.

Gladdy hadn’t really been listening before, but now he actively ignored the sounds of Mama and Dr. Neuros speaking.  If they wanted his attention, they could get it.  In the meantime, he could enjoy stacking blocks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The best part of writing baby Gladio as an unreliable narrator HAS to be interpreting most adults as "short" just because they're shorter than his parents.


	9. An Unexpected Guest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gladio joins the Crownsguard in earnest as a cadet. Also, Cid comes to visit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My life's been super busy recently, and I haven't had any time or energy to actually finish editing this. I finally got a half-hour in the morning when I actually wanted to read over it again; sorry for the delay!
> 
> Shoutout to Brosura on Tumblr for the spectacular headcanon about Gladio getting uniform violations because he just can't say no to Iris when she gives him good luck charms!

One week into being a Crownsguard cadet, and Gladio already had a nickname.  Everyone called him “Kid” in what seemed like a neutral and non-mocking way, and called him “The Kid” to each other.  He did have to admit “Amicitia” was a bit of a mouthful, and definitely sounded more like an officer than a cadet.  Even Cor had started barking out, “Kid!” instead of his name during training.

In fact, when his drill sergeant barked, “Amicitia!” he was pretty sure it meant he was in trouble.   _“What_ is on your hands, cadet?” Sgt. Exerceo continued.

Oh, right.  Well, no use acting embarrassed; that would just get him yelled at until he spoke up.  “It’s my sister’s favorite color, sir!” he said, smiling in a way he hoped came off as agreeable and not rude.

“You’re out of uniform, Amicitia,” his sergeant told him in that sharp way drill sergeants seemed to cultivate specially so their voices would be as grating as possible. “You can stay after to do push-ups.”

“Yes, sir!”  Was that all?  He _liked_ push-ups.  He liked knowing he was good at them, and the way his arms felt when he exerted them like that. And he didn’t mind a little soreness.

.-._.-._.-._

Once a month, Gladio’s dad hosted a dinner for all his friends who’d seen combat.  It wasn’t uncommon for Cor to come for the whole afternoon.  Gladio had never felt excluded from his parents’ afternoon conversations with Cor, and even as a kid he’d been invited to play cards with them, but he preferred spending Saturday afternoons with Iris in the nursery.  He’d never known Cor to seek him out, but when the Marshal came and knocked on the playroom door frame, it certainly wasn’t to talk to Iris.

They were playing tea party, and Gladio was, of course, following tea party dress code by wearing a fancy hat and the four necklaces Iris had told him to put on.  Iris was wearing a skirt made of sparkly tulle and an even fancier hat, and she smiled up at him.  “Hi, Cor!” she chirped.  “Would you like to join our tea party?”

Cor Leonis, Marshal of the Crownsguard, the Immortal, the King’s Champion, hesitated.  He looked at Gladio, who tried to keep his embarrassment out of his face because he didn’t want his eight-year-old sister to think there was anything wrong with her interests.  “Yeah, sure,” he said, and came to sit with them at the playroom table that even Iris had almost outgrown.

Iris went to dig around in the costume box, presumably for a hat and whatever else Cor would need, while Cor smirked at Gladio and said, “I think I’m under-dressed.”

Gladio nodded.  “Yeah, Iris likes her tea parties extra-fancy.  So, at eight, that mostly means lots of glitter.”

“I wanted to talk to you privately because I’ve got a frankly ridiculous stack of uniform violation reports on my desk, and your sergeant’s been turning this kind of purplish color every time he talks about it.”  Iris came over to hand Cor a brightly painted scarf and a straw hat with blue and yellow flowers on it.  He thanked her politely and started putting them on while he told Gladio, “It’s pretty amusing, but I still have to ask you to stop.  Not for the sake of your drill sergeant, you understand, and apparently not for the sake of your poor, abused arm and core muscles or you would’ve stopped already, but because there’s no way to communicate in words how much I hate paperwork, and I’d like us to stay on reasonably friendly terms.  Thank you, Iris.”  Gladio hadn’t been paying attention to her setting up a place setting for Cor or pouring him a miniature teacup full of apple juice, but Cor picked his teacup up and sipped from it.

“You’re welcome, Cor,” she said.  “Oh, and we have a special tea party rule that you have to make eye contact with whoever you’re talking to.”

 _That_ was embarrassing, and Gladio could feel himself blush because that rule only existed because Gladio had explained his difficulty with eye contact to Iris when she was five.

Cor, though, just nodded and looked at her as he said, “Thank you for telling me.  I wouldn’t want to break any rules.”  Then he looked back to Gladio, the whole situation ten times more uncomfortable now that they had to look each other in the eye, and said, “Anyway, that’s all I wanted to ask about.  Looking at the nature of the violations, I figured Iris should be here when we discussed it.”  He finally looked away from Gladio to grab a cookie from the plate in the middle of the table.

“Is Gladdy in trouble?” Iris asked.  “Is he in big trouble?”

“He’s in very minor trouble,” Cor said.  Seeing she looked a little confused, he said, “Small trouble.  The smallest kind of trouble.”  Turning back to Gladio, he said, “But it’s going to turn into medium-sized trouble if it keeps happening.  I just don’t want your dad to hear about it from the wrong person; I know he’s a stickler.  And he tends to avoid allegations of favoritism by being an a—I mean, by _holding the people close to him to very high standards.”_

It was weird, hearing that from Cor while he wore one of Iris’ scarves and hats and drank apple juice out of a teacup.  Heck, it was weird talking to Cor while wearing four necklaces and a hat while they both sat in too-small chairs.  “I can ask Dad what I can do,” Gladio said, not letting his gaze slide away from Cor’s, “But, when Iris gives me a good luck charm, or paints my nails, I don’t want to act like I don’t appreciate it.”  He considered his wording for a moment before he added, “I never wear things that inhibit my movement.  And I don’t try to sneak out of the extra work.”

“I know that,” Cor said.  “And I can see it in the reports on my desk.  I just don’t want you branded as a troublemaker when you’re just trying to be a good older brother.”

As Cor finished speaking, Talcott waddled into the room from the adjoining bedroom.  He was supposed to be sleeping, but nap time was mostly over, so when he went straight to Gladio and raised his hands to be picked up, Gladio just picked him up and bounced him on his knee.  “I’ll ask Dad what he does,” Gladio said, using Talcott as a convenient excuse to look down instead of at Cor.  “I promise.  But I can’t promise I’ll stop violating uniform regs.”  Talcott yanked on one of Gladio’s necklaces with his grabby toddler hand, so Gladio tried not to wince as he asked, “Hey, Tally, you want that one?” and took his hat off briefly so he could give the toddler the necklace.

Surprisingly, Cor said, “Fair enough.”  Then he paused and asked, “Have you tried looking at nose bridges instead of eyes?  That’s what’s gotten me through all the court functions Reggie makes me go to.  It’s about ten times easier than real eye contact, and the kind of people who notice are usually the kind of people who have the same trick up their sleeve.”

Gladio had the distant sensation that some important part of himself had been shattered apart and glued back together.  He said, “Oh.  Thank you,” and didn’t know how else to respond.  He’d put years of work and stress and self-discipline into making good eye contact, and he was still noticeably bad at it, and now one of his dad’s friends happened to drop in on him playing with Iris, and she happened to mention it was one of their rules, and Cor had simultaneously made Gladio’s life easier forever and invalidated years of hard work.  He had too many emotions to feel so quickly.  He forgot to bounce Talcott until the toddler whined his name and wriggled around.

Cor nodded.  “Yeah.  Best advice I’ve ever gotten.  Figure it’s worth passing on to people who need it.”  He turned to Iris, looked her in the eye (or not), and said, “Thank you very much for letting me join your tea party, Iris.  That was very generous of you.  I’m sorry I can’t stay longer, but your dad gets annoyed at me if I don’t let him win at least one round of chess, and I beat him before I came up here.”

That made Gladio smile and Iris giggle.  Iris said, “If you play cards instead, I can play with you.”

Cor undid his scarf and handed it to her as he said, “Some of your dad’s friends who come to these dinners like to use words that are so rude, you’ll get in trouble at school if you say them even once.  It’s better not to know those words until you’re a little older.  Also, we mostly talk about grown-up things that you wouldn’t be interested in.  That’s why Gladio likes to hang out with you and Talcott instead of your dad’s friends.”  He took his hat off and handed that to Iris, too.  “And, someday, you’ll be old and boring, too, and you’ll go to your dad’s parties and talk about boring grown-up things and swear with the best of them.  But you’ll probably be older than Gladio is now by the time you want to do that.”

“Will you at least wrestle with us?” Iris asked, the very pinnacle of innocent childhood hope.

“Um…”  Cor glanced at Gladio, and then back to Iris.

“We both like wrestling,” Gladio told him. “So we made it part of tea parties.”

“We allow everything in the Crownsguard and International Wrestling League rules,” Iris chirped.  “We don’t allow tickling, though.  Gladdy kicks you if you tickle him.”

“Good to know,” Cor told her.  “Would this be the same kind of wrestling that keeps getting your parents called to your school?”

Iris shook her head.  “No,” she said, “I only teach the Crownsguard style there.  My friends only know a little bit, and Dad always says: knowing two or three moves well is better than knowing thirty moves badly.”

“That’s very wise of you,” Cor told her.  “I’m really not dressed for fighting, but would you mind if I watched?”

Iris was eight years old and got excited about any adult attention, since it made their sparring feel more legitimate.  Gladio was sixteen years old and a Crownsguard cadet, and he really didn’t want a superior officer to watch him fight a kid half his age, but he wasn’t about to deny his sister anything that got her so excited.

With Cor’s help, they cleaned up the tea things and set up the floor mats.  “You ready, Moogle?” Gladio asked his sister, who was still wearing her sparkly tulle skirt.

“Ready!  What about you, Gladdy?”

“Yep, ready.  Three, two, one, go!”

Wrestling with Iris was always fun.  They never hurt each other, but they also didn’t go so soft on each other it felt unfair.  Talcott enjoyed sitting on the sidelines and cheering them both on.

It wasn’t Gladio’s best match.  Cor watching made him nervous.  He knew he wouldn’t hurt Iris, but did Cor believe that?  Also, they were way out of regulation; how would Cor feel about that?  He was distracted enough that Iris beat him after only a few minutes.  Cor counted out seconds for them without being asked.

“We have a winner!” Gladio yelled as he got up, and lifted Iris up and swung her around in a circle.  “Good going, Moogle!  You got me!” He blew a raspberry right in the middle of her belly and she shrieked with laughter.

“Kids, have you seen Cor?” their dad asked from the hallway, heading toward the playroom.  “He was looking for you, Gladi—oh, good.  Looks like you did find them,” he said when he appeared in the doorway.  “Have you discussed whatever-it-was with Gladio?  Cid just showed up with no warning and I figured you’d want to see him.”

“I always want to see him,” Cor said immediately.  “Never know if I want to hug him or punch him, but I definitely want to see him.”

“Punching is only allowed in practice spaces,” Gladio’s dad joked.  “Gladio, would you like to come meet our friend?  You’ve heard about Cid, but he usually holes himself up in Hammerhead, so I don’t think you’ve met him since you were… two years old, I believe.”

“The one from your stories?” Iris asked, excited.

“The very same,” their dad said.  “The grumpiest, rudest, meanest of us.  I swear, he would have set up shop as a bridge troll if he wasn’t so in love with cars and motorcycles.”

Cor smirked, which Gladio was beginning to think was just the most he ever smiled.  “Nah, he likes people,” he said.  “Just not too many people.  He’s a lot easier to get along with in Hammerhead than he ever was in Insomnia.  He had to go to the middle of nowhere the same way Weskham had to go to the biggest library in the world.”  He looked at Gladio and said, “I think you’ll like him.  He’s rude, but he doesn’t mean anything by it.”

“He certainly saved our lives plenty of times,” Gladio’s dad added.  “I wouldn’t exactly call it networking, but I think it would be good for you to meet him.”

Cor punched Gladio’ s dad lightly on the arm and they started walking out of the nursery and down the hall.  Gladio waved goodbye to Iris and followed them, overhearing Cor ask,  “How late d’you think it’ll be before he asks to stay over?”

Gladio’s dad shook his head and told him, “I’m not even asking this time; I just sent Jared to make sure the guest room is ready.”

They were almost down the stairs by then, and went to the parlor, where Gladio’s mom was standing next to a man Gladio had never met, but who somehow looked just like all the pictures Gladio had seen from twenty years ago, just grayer and a little shaggier.

“Aw, hey, if it isn’t the little tyke!” Cid said when he saw Gladio, who thought that was a little weird to say about someone who was taller than you.  “Not so little anymore, are ya?”

“Cid, may I formally introduce my son Gladiolus, now that he’s old enough to remember you,” Gladio’s dad said, putting a hand on the back of Gladio’s shoulders.  “Gladio, this is Cid Sophiar.  I journeyed all around Lucis with him.”

Gladio shook the stranger’s hand.  It was leathery and dry, and very warm.  “Good to finally meet you, sir,” he said, smiling politely.

“You, too.  Haven’t been in Insomnia in over a decade.  I mostly avoid it when I can.”

Cor crossed the room in a few long strides, almost pushing Gladio aside to hug his friend.  What brings you into town this time?” he asked.

“This Six-damned will call,” Cid told him, clapping Cor on the shoulder as they separated.  “They want me to pay four hundred gil to ship to Hammerhead.  The part’s barely worth that much!  I remembered Clare and Ceanothus used to host poker on Saturdays, so I figured it was a good day to visit.”

“Visit? You?” Gladio’s dad joked, but he immediately backed down and said, “You know you’re always welcome.  It’s been far too long; you know I can’t get out of the City like Cor.”  He walked to the drinks cupboard.  “At last report, you drank Lieden whiskey, but I wonder if I couldn’t tempt you with some Golden Feather sherry.”  He poured decanted, rosy-brown liquor into three glasses and then stopped.

Cid smirked.  “You know I’m always a sucker for it.  Prob’ly tastes the same now as it did back then.”  Gladio’s dad started handing glasses around and Cid took a sip of his.  “Nope,” he said, grinning.  “Better.”

“Would you like some, Gladio?” his dad asked, and Gladio nodded along to the adult conversation, not realizing he’d been asked a question.

“Oh, sorry, what?” he asked.

“I said, would you like some sherry?” his dad offered.  “It’s very good.”

“Okay.”  His parents didn’t offer him alcohol much, though they usually did when company came over.  And they never offered enough to let him get drunk.

The sherry was very good.  The adults all chatted together easily about old adventures and current events, and Gladio sat with them and tried not to feel out of place.

“Tell me about the kid,” Cid said when the conversation came to a lull.  “Gladio, right?  How’s school goin’?”

That was a completely normal question that Gladio should have anticipated, should have already had a scripted answer to, but he didn’t and he was such a failure at school and getting along with people that he’d been expelled, and he didn’t know how to cast that in a positive light.

“He’s been studying independently recently,” his dad said.  “It’s easier to do alongside Crownsguard training.”

Cid nodded as if that meant something.  “Making sure he gets out on the training field early,” he said.  “Good move.  Can’t have two Shields in a row who don’t know one end of a sword from the other.”

Gladio’s mom grinned and raised her eyebrows excitedly at Cor, who nodded back at her.  Gladio’s dad said, “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

Cid snorted.  “You mean you _forgot_ how we all had to save your ass?” he asked.  “Nah, you ain’t forgot – you just don’t wanna remember.”

“Tell the one where he fell in a ditch,” Gladio’s mom encouraged.  “I never get tired of that one.”  Cor coughed in a way that sounded suspiciously like a laugh.

“Alright, alright,” Cid said, smirking wickedly.  “So, picture this: we’re in the mountains up over Liede.  Got reports of some coeurls up there in the highlands and we were just comin’ back down the holler to collect the reward.  We warn’t too beat down, but coulda used a shower and a real bed.  Clarus was carryin’ their whiskers so we’d have proof we beat ‘em.  And there was a garula in the road, which happens sometimes in the hills.”

“The traditional part to mention here,” Cor cut in, looking at Gladio, “which you already know, is that the Crownsguard puts a big emphasis on alertness.  They want you to always be aware of your surroundings, both the scenery and the people and animals.  And officer training back then was mostly theoretical.  It was tactics and strategy for rich kids.  There was _maybe_ six months of actual combat training included.”

“So we’re walkin’ up to this garula,” Cid resumed.  “Givin’ it a wide berth, since, y’know, it’s a garula.  Except Clarus, who walked right up to it, stopped about two feet away from it, then yelled, _jumped_ backward, and stumbled his way into the drainage ditch by the side of the road.”

“I was fifteen at the time,” Cor pointed out.  “He was twenty.  We’d both just climbed halfway up and down a mountain and fought three coeurls.  I guess, somehow, we all expected the _Shield of the Crown Prince_ to notice a literal garula.”

Cid added, “Near broke his tailbone.  Weskham had to take the whiskers, and I had to let him lean on my shoulder the rest of the way back, just for bein’ damn stupid.”

His mom snorted, and Cor toasted his dad’s clumsiness, and Gladio felt bad and he wasn’t sure why.  But he smiled and drank to the toast and watched his dad keep smiling because it was just a memory, just something he’d done when he was young and inexperienced.

Gladio wasn’t sure he’d get to go on the kind of road trip his dad and Cor and Cid had gone on.  With the Wall pulled in to the edges of Insomnia, it was dangerous in the Outlands.  His dad took him camping sometimes, but was that to prepare him for the journey?  Or was it just because they both tended to feel cramped and uncomfortable in the City?  His parents were really protective of him, always standing up for him in front of adults; would they trust him to hold his own by the time Noctis was ready to make the journey?

…Would _Noctis_ be able to make the journey, with his injuries?

The conversation had moved on.  Cor was telling the story of the first time he’d sparred Gladio’s dad.

“Turned him right on his ass,” Cor was saying.  “Ten moves in.  The scion of Amicitia House, Shield of Prince Regis.  I was a month away from being fifteen.”

“You were very successfully pretending to be a month away from seventeen,” Gladio’s dad pointed out.

“He looked twelve,” Cid argued.  “He was a little kitten.  Flipped you like a flapjack.”

Gladio felt vaguely nauseous.  No matter how many embarrassing stories he shared, his dad had _recovered_ from that embarrassment.  Gladio, in contrast, had grades that ended after his sophomore year of high school and a letter saying he’d been expelled from one of the best schools in Insomnia.  It wasn’t _written_ anywhere that his dad had embarrassed himself in front of Cor, or zoned out while on a mission.  It didn’t matter.

“Fortunately, I cleaned up my act after that,” his dad was saying.  Usually, when Gladio got stressed out, he stopped being able to hear words very well, but now it was like he was hearing everything in high-def and it was a very different kind of unpleasant.  “Stopped being such a brat just because of my lineage.  Doubled down on combat training and actually learned something for a change.”  He winked at Gladio.

Gladio smiled a little in response.  It was a joke.  They were having a fun time, having some nice wine in the parlor to celebrate his dad’s friend coming into town.  The adults were telling embarrassing stories about each other, and his dad had jumped in to defend him when Cid asked about his schooling.

It felt like Gladio was the only one there who wasn’t being honest about his past.  He didn’t want to sit with the adults, pretend he was one of them, and not be honest about why he didn’t go to high school anymore.

He ducked his head and stared at his knees and said, “The reason I’m studying independently is because I got kicked out of my high school.”

There was a pause.  His mom said, “Gladio,” very quietly, and he continued before she could try to tell him not to say this.

“I hit a kid because he always made fun of me, and my grades sucked, and I ended up getting kicked out.  I think I see what you’re trying to do, making fun of yourselves, but it’s a different level of embarrassing, and you don’t need to make me feel better about it because it was my fault in the first place.  Um.  Sorry.  I’ll go back upstairs.”

He looked around for a place to put his glass down and was almost ready to stand up when Cid said, “Jeez, Cea, you never told us the kid was Cor’s,” and Cor cough-laughed again.

His dad said, “You don’t have to go anywhere, dearest.  Cor got into infinite fights at your age, and now he’s the Marshal of the Crownsguard.  It was one mistake.”

“Most of my fights weren’t even mistakes,” Cor supplied helpfully.  “I had one hell of a temper.  You’re doing fine, kid.”

“We’ve all been teenagers,” his dad added.  “We understand how difficult it is.”  His eyes moved to Gladio’s mom and he added, “Really, though, Cea, if you were going to sneak around on me with Cor, you could at least have told me after.”  His mom lost her composure and doubled over laughing, and Cor, who was closest to her, quickly took her glass.

“Better for him to get his feelings out, anyway,” Cor said, his mouth twisting into that smirk that seemed more expressive every time Gladio saw it.  “Maybe he won’t do dumb bullshit like run off to the front lines or the Proving Grounds.”

Why was everyone so calm?  Why was nobody mad at him?  It was the wrong response, and he didn’t know what to do about that.  It felt like they were dismissing the bravery it had taken for Gladio to get the words out in the first place.

“Pour ‘im another one, would you, Clare?” Cid suggested.  “The kid’s baring his soul here; he could use some loosening up.”  He leaned toward Gladio and added, “Some people just deserve it, honestly.”

His dad sighed loudly and poured more sherry into Gladio’s glass.

“You can’t just not tell him who _you_ punched,” Gladio’s mom told Cid, almost sounding offended.  Was Cid somehow leaving out the best part of the story?  …Did he punch Cor?  Or even, somehow, Gladio’s dad?

Cid frowned and said, “Well, thing is, there’s some debate about that.  See, I punched him as Reggie, but the Guard reacted like I was punching King Regis.”

“You punched the _King?”_ Gladio asked, awed and horrified.  Why?  How?  Was that why he didn’t live in Insomnia anymore?

“I punched a friend who was being an ass and knew it,” Cid corrected him.  “Warn’t gonna hurt him any way that wouldn’t heal.  And he called off his dogs in a second; even Clarus didn’t think it was worth getting’ all worked up about.  He can’t say, ‘cause he has to be the Shield and back Reggie up, but I could tell he knew I was right because he didn’t lift a single finger to help Reggie.”

“I’m changing the subject,” Cor interrupted.  “Gladio, how _have_ your studies been going?  I remember, when you started, Tellus pointed out that Iggy was a lot happier with independent tutoring than he was in a classroom setting.  Is it the same for you?”

Gladio nodded; it felt like an easy question to answer, even though Cid asked him almost the exact same thing earlier and he hadn’t known what to say.  “Yeah, a lot of my classmates before were… not great, and tests are easier without having to hear twenty other people take tests.”  Did Cor _know_ about him?  Gladio got the feeling he did, but he also knew that wasn’t the sort of thing his parents would let slip without telling him.  But he’d offered that eye contact advice…

Cor was nodding.  “And I hear good things about your officer training,” he added.  “Captain Belli said you’re on your way to being a great strategist.”

Gladio ducked his head and took a sip of his wine to stall for time, then said, “Thank you.  He’s a really good teacher.”

His mom said, “You know, Cid, you told us you were here on business, but what kind of repairs are you doing that need such expensive parts?” and Cid glanced at Gladio again, looking confused, and then talked about the snowmobile-like vehicle his client was making for travel over sand.  And, just like that, no one was paying attention to Gladio anymore, and when other guests started to arrive, he said good night and went back upstairs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just so we're on the same page:
> 
> -Iris is meeting Cid in the morning, over breakfast. They aren't going to just not introduce her, but they also want to give Gladio some time to feel like One Of The Adults.
> 
> -Cid punched Regis because of a debate over the age people should be allowed into the Crownsguard. Regis and Clarus can't really let their feelings inform their side of the argument because they have an army and need to keep recruitment numbers up. Cid thinks sending children to be cannon fodder is inhuman, and Cor takes that personally since he faked his papers to get in and he's just fine. Cid doesn't object to a sixteen-year-old being trained as an officer because he knows Gladio, the oldest Amicitia child whose duty keeps him right in the heart of Insomnia, probably won't see battle for years.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed the chapter! :)


	10. Catastrophe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The news reached Gladio the morning after.
> 
> “We had a call, late last night, in the Council,” his dad told everyone over breakfast. “An attempt on the lives of the royal family, using some kind of daemon that was able to withstand sunlight. Queen Aulea died protecting Prince Noctis. Noctis had several hours of surgery overnight and… the best news they have for us is that he’ll probably live.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the start of the Noctis Recovery Arc, so the next chapter will follow chronologically from this one. :)

The news reached Gladio the morning after.

“We had a call, late last night, in the Council,” his dad told everyone over breakfast.  Gladio’s mom wasn’t there, but Jared and several other servants were.  “An attempt on the lives of the royal family, using some kind of daemon that was able to withstand sunlight.”  Gladio was horrified – he remembered Noctis telling him how excited he was to visit Lestallum, and he would never have thought a vacation could go so wrong – but thankfully, his father was never one to keep them in suspense.  “Queen Aulea died protecting Prince Noctis.  Noctis had several hours of surgery overnight and… the best news they have for us is that he’ll probably live.”

“What’s the worst news?” Gladio asked.  “Unless Iris can’t hear it.”  He was grateful that his parents didn’t sugar-coat current events just because Iris was so little, but he was twelve and already acting as something close to a real Shield, and injuries that might kill you were guaranteed to leave scars that took years to heal.

“The current prognosis is that they don’t expect him to be able to walk again,” their dad said.  “There are deep cuts to one of his legs.  He took a terrible blow to his back, so he’ll probably need help getting around, even in a wheelchair.”  He took a bite of toast while he waited for Gladio or Iris to respond.

“Did it hurt?” Iris asked.  Gladio felt he had too many questions to ask one at a time.

“It hurt very much,” their dad said.  “So badly that, when he returns to Insomnia, he’s still going to have a lot of pain.  It might even hurt him for the rest of his life.”

Iris took on a very serious expression and Gladio could tell she understood how serious an injury it was, as much as any four-year-old could.

“What do I need to do?” Gladio asked.  He knew there would be new expectations for him and he didn’t want to be caught off-guard.

“For today, I need you and Iris to go into town and buy appropriate mourning clothes for Queen Aulea,” his dad told him.  He gave Ms. B., Iris’ nurse, a pointed look, and she nodded.  He turned back to Gladio.  “I promise I’ll speak to you about Noctis more when I have a moment, but I expect to be in Council all day, and I probably won’t be home until late in the evening.”

“I understand,” Gladio told him.  “What… do I say to adults about it?  And what are they going to say to me?”  He could take his sister shopping, he could delay feeling anything about the whole horrible mess until he was home, but he couldn’t answer questions about it without some amount of preparation, and he hadn’t learned how to offer condolences properly in either his etiquette lessons or his conversation therapy.

His dad frowned.  “If the press asks you anything, remind them it’s illegal to take statements from minors without parental consent,” he said.  “If you see someone you know, they may offer condolences for Aulea or sympathy for Noctis.  You don’t have to do more than thank them.  If they ask how you’re feeling, you can be honest if you like or, if you don’t want to discuss it, you can say that, too.  You’re closer to the royal family than anyone you’ll meet, so no one will expect you to be the one to reach out.”

Gladio nodded.  He could do that.  He said, “I’ll call Mom, too, in case she needs anything.”  She was staying with a friend near the Wall after a difficult birth, so she wouldn’t have much time to prepare before she was expected to make public appearances.

His dad just nodded and said, “Good plan.  I called her with the news last night, so don’t worry it will surprise her.  And I’ll come straight home after Council, but I suspect it’s going to be a very long session.”

“We’ll set out after breakfast,” Gladio told him.  “That way, we’ll be home for nap time.”

Their dad nodded and said, “Text me if you hit any snags.  And be sure your phone has a good charge before you go, in case something unexpected happens.”

Gladio nodded and had some eggs.  He was very careful to put any concern about the royal family or international relations out of his mind; he would have time for feelings later, when he and Iris were both properly outfitted, and preferably after Iris had been put down for her nap.

Breakfast was mostly quiet after that.  Normal discussion topics seemed frivolous when their queen had died.  Their dad said goodbye and Gladio took Iris upstairs to get dressed.  He checked on his phone battery and tucked his dad’s credit card into his wallet while Iris’ nurse wrangled her into acceptable clothes.  He called his mom while he styled his hair, brushing it out and plaiting small locks of it in the Galahdian style.

“Good morning, dearest,” his mom’s warm, deep voice said over the phone.  “Did Dad tell you the news?”

“Yeah.  Iris and I are going out for mourning clothes today,” he told her.  “Do you need anything?”

“How sweet of you to ask,” she said.  “No, I should be alright.  Marina is still feverish, the poor thing, but I’ll try to get home soon.  Are you going out with Jared or Ms. B?”  An excellent question, since he hadn’t even thought of taking Jared, but it was clear who his dad had intended them to take.

“Ms. B,” Gladio answered.  “She’s doing Iris’ hair right now.  She’s better to have if Iris gets upset.”  And she knew what to do if Gladio got upset, too, though she was usually pretty rude about it these days.  But Gladio was… He was holding up.  He would be alright just knowing he could fall apart later.  He was old enough to babysit Iris on her nurse’s nights off, and he was old enough to be the adult in an emergency.

“Don’t stay out too long, okay, Gladdy?  You have a difficult few weeks coming up, and it’s no use wearing yourself out now.”

“I won’t, Mom,” he promised.  “We’ll be back before nap time.”

“Good.”  Her voice was warm and kind as she told him, “It sounds like you have everything figured out, Gladdy.  You really are growing into a very responsible young man.  Don’t forget to give yourself time to mourn, too.”

He said a quiet “Thank you,” and then he said, “I’m making sure we have clothes first, and then I can worry all afternoon.”

“There’s a good boy.  Oh, and stop by the kitchen for some snacks before you head out; if you’re running late, you’ll need something to fall back on.”  She sighed and said, “I love you so much, Gladdy.  I’ll be home as soon as I can.  Give Iris a big hug for me.”

“I will,” Gladio promised.  “And I’ll make sure we take some food with us.  Love you, Mom.”

“Love you, too, Gladiolus.  Call or text me if there’s anything you need.  Even if you just need to talk for a while.”  He hung up, did the finishing touches on his hair, and went to check on Iris.

It seemed Iris was actually cooperating; she was fully dressed and Ms. B had gotten her hair up into pigtails.  “All ready to go, Moogle?” he asked, lunging forward to pick her up.  He held her on his hip and said, “Mom says to remember to bring snacks.”  Then he addressed Iris again to tell her, “She also sends a biiiig hug,” and squeezed her tight.

Ms. B handed him her keyring and said, “I talked to Cook before I came upstairs.  I’ll go pick up the food if you get Iris into her car seat.”  He took the keys and told Iris all about the fun they were going to have at the mall so he could distract her from the reason they had to go.

Ms. B said it all the time: he had a gift for dealing with Iris.  He got the squirming toddler into her car seat almost as quickly as Ms. B took to get snacks.  Then he handed over the keys and sat next to Iris during the trip, singing along enthusiastically with the single most annoying CD he’d ever had the misfortune to listen to sixty times over.

Shopping was hard.  He didn’t want to be there, and Iris clearly didn’t, either.  Ms. B helped them remember all the things they needed to get, and kept them always moving forward.  If Gladio had tried to insist he was in charge, it would have taken twice as long; as it was, they were home in plenty of time for Iris’ usual nap time, and she only started crying and screaming when they were already on the way home.

“We’ll be home soon,” Gladio soothed, stroking her hair.  “Today’s been way too much, hasn’t it?  But soon you can have a nice nap.”  She’d been fussing around eleven, but bounced back when she had some rice balls and apple slices, so this time, it had to be sleep she needed.

 _“I don’t want a nap”_ she screeched.  _“I want to play with Mr. Pom-Pom!”_

“You can, Iris,” Gladio told her gently.  “You can.  It’s five or ten minutes ‘til we get home.  Can you be patient for ten minutes?”  They could tuck her into bed with her moogle plush and she’d be out like a light in two minutes.

Naturally, her answer was to yell, “No!” and try to hit him.

“Heyyy, Moogle,” he said, and kissed her head as she squirmed and thrashed.  “I feel bad when I’m tired, too.  It’s okay to feel bad.  But no hitting, okay?  You could’ve hurt me.”  She couldn’t have, really, but he knew he was supposed to say it.

“I don’t care!” she screamed at him.  “I want Noctis!”  Gladio felt her words like a punch in the chest, the kind delivered by someone much larger than a four-year-old.

“He’s out of town,” he said, keeping his voice calm because Iris needed him to.  “You know how Mom and Dad go away sometimes, but they always come back?  Noctis is gonna come back soon.  He and King Regis are coming back together.”  Gladio wasn’t entirely sure that was true – they definitely could have rescheduled, with Noct getting injured, so maybe Noctis would be in Lestallum for a while – but the important thing was to calm Iris down enough that she’d be able to sleep.

Finally, they got back to the house.  “Okay, little one,” Ms. B said, pulling Iris out of the car seat and into her arms, then shooting a thankful smile Gladio’s way, “I think I heard something about a nap in all that screaming.  Why don’t you and Mr. Pom-Pom have a nap together?”

Iris sobbed into her nurse’s shoulder and was almost asleep by the time they were upstairs, having mostly cried herself out on the drive.

“You should get some rest, too,” Ms. B told Gladio outside the nursery.  “You’ve been flagging since lunch.”

Gladio didn’t mean to, but seeing her kind, sympathetic smile, the fear and sadness he’d been holding in all day choked him and came out as tears.

“I have to get this one down,” Ms. B said, resettling Iris in her arms.  “Go to bed, Gladio.  You’re not so old, yourself.”

She turned and took Iris into the nursery.  Gladio tried to follow her advice, but he couldn’t get his mind off the tragedy, or the guilty knowledge that he hadn’t been there to shield Noctis from danger.  He was only twelve, hardly old enough to tag along while his mother was away and his father was needed to be King Regis’ voice in the Council, but he still felt he should have gone along.

When he couldn’t get to sleep, he went down to the training yard, instead.  His head and his heart were both exhausted, but he didn’t think he’d be able to sleep until his body was also tired out.

Jared found him there maybe half an hour later, practicing sword drills and crying.  “Master Amicitia,” he called from near the house, and lost no time walking toward Gladio.  “Ms. B said she couldn’t find you.”  He came and put a hand on Gladio’s shoulder, and gently took the practice sword away from him.  “You’ve been out here long enough.  A little exercise can clear your head; too much, when you’re so upset, will only make you sick.”  He guided Gladio back toward the house, pausing only to put the practice sword back on the rack under the eaves.

“It doesn’t matter,” Gladio told him.  “I didn’t protect him when it counted.”

Jared patted him on the back and said, “No one could have predicted what happened.  What you can do now is help him as he heals.”  Now, inside, he led Gladio up the stairs and to his bedroom.  “Get some rest, Gladio.  Your mother will be home in an hour or two and she’ll be glad to hear you’ve rested.”

 _That_ was news.  “She’s coming home?” he asked, so excited his words all started sticking together.  “But what ab-bout Marina?  She’sssssstill sick!”

Jared shrugged.  “She has medicine, and staff, and other friends.  The baby has a nurse.  Where else is your mother needed more than here?”

Gladio couldn’t exactly argue with that, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep, either.  He thanked Jared and shut himself in his room, and resigned himself to an hour or more of worry and uncertainty that he wouldn’t be able to pour into Shield training.

He lay around, reading poetry and wishing he could sleep or even just calm down, when he heard voices downstairs.  He sat up and took deep breaths and prepared to greet his mom, finally home after a week, as the oldest child who could handle being in charge instead of as a crybaby who couldn’t handle the small amount of responsibility his parents had given him.

He heard his mom and Ms. B talking in the hallway.  “He was distraught, poor thing,” Ms. B said as she came into hearing range.  “Fell right to pieces as soon as Iris was asleep.”  She sighed and added, “I worry about that boy.  He never just tells you when he’s reached his limits, always hides it and makes you guess.  At least Iris is little enough to have tells.”

“Thank you, Beatrice,” Gladio’s mom said quietly.  It sounded like they were right outside his door.  “I’ll ask him about that.”  There was a gentle knock on his door and then his mom asked, “Gladio, sweetie?  Are you awake?”

He went and answered his door, smiling in an attempt to hide how upset he was even though she already knew.  “Welcome home, Mom!  I’m sorry you had to come back.”

“I wasn’t able to think about anything else all night,” she said.  “Aulea was a dear friend, and poor little Noctis is still in danger.  It’s natural to be upset.  Can I sit with you for a few minutes?”

“Yeah, sure,” Gladio said, worrying he was about to get lectured at.  He went and sat down on his bed, and his mom followed him.

“You were very brave today,” she said, putting her arm around his shoulders.  “I’m sorry you had to be so responsible on such a difficult day.”

Tears bubbled up again, never far from the surface now.  “I’m so scared for Noctis,” he told her.  Queen Aulea was dead, and nothing could be done about that, but every moment, Noctis could die and Gladio would have done nothing to help him.

“I am, too,” his mom told him.  “Just like you told me earlier, right?  You took the morning to do what was needed, and now you can fall apart?” She rubbed the top of his shoulder and asked, “So?  How do you think you should deal with your fear?  Do you need to feel it and process it for a little longer, or do you need to be comforted?”

Gladio leaned forward and let himself cry.  He needed his mom to be who he’d thought she was when he was little.  He needed her to know what was wrong and fix it, but the world was bigger and scarier than he’d thought as a kid, and his parents weren’t as all-powerful as he used to think.  Finally, he managed to ask, “Could I sit in your lap?”

His mom toed her shoes off and moved Gladio’s pillow to support her back as she leaned back against his headboard.  She reached over to touch his arm and said, “Come sit with me, little eaglet.”  He used to sit in her lap when he was sad or scared, and she was so much bigger than him that he’d felt protected from everything.  Now, he sat sideways between her legs as she held him close to her.

“My own little darling,” she said, holding him tight.  “I’ve got you, Gladdy.  I’ve got you.”

Gladio cried himself out against her shoulder.  It felt safer to think about Noctis and Queen Aulea – and all the guards he’d never met, who had surely also died – with his mom there to comfort him.

“Is that a little better?” his mom asked when he’d quieted down, still holding him close.  Gladio nodded and trusted she had felt his head move.  “Good.  I’m glad, love.  That was so much to have to hold in all day.”

“What can I do for him?” Gladio asked.  “I feel so useless.”

“You can do what you’ve always done,” his mom told him.  “You can be his friend.”  She kissed the top of his head.  “I’ve read that, the healthier a person is to begin with, the more likely they are to survive.  Noctis was a very healthy boy to begin with, and I haven’t heard anything about him getting worse.”  They both startled a little when they heard Iris start yelling.  “Sounds like someone else needs their mom, too,” his mom said, smiling, and kissed him on the cheek.  “Do you want to come with me?”

Gladio got off her and she returned to the edge of the bed to slip her shoes back on.  “I’m good,” he said.  “Thank you.”  Realizing that might have sounded like he was thanking her for inviting him along, he clarified, “Not thank you for letting me see Iris with you.  I meant thank you for holding me.”  He felt embarrassed and needy and childish, and he thought he was blushing, but he also felt better.

“Whatever you need, Gladdy,” his mom said warmly, and walked back to hug him.  “Now,” she said, smiling, when she pulled away, “Let’s see if I can’t calm a four-year-old.  They’re notoriously tricky, you know.”  She winked at him and left the room.


	11. Recovery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Noctis starts physical therapy. Gladio helps by learning some of the stretches.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Most of this chapter's been rewritten several times. The part with Gladio's mom had at least three versions, and I think the ending had four. I still can't tell if the timing's good or not because I've read so many versions so many times. I really like the arc of this chapter, though! And I'm looking forward to the exciting conclusion of the "Noct gets hurt by the marilith" arc next week!

Noctis did recover, sort of.  At least, all the adults Gladio knew who had experience with really bad injuries said the Prince was doing well.  He moved back into his room in the Citadel along with a big, ugly machine that monitored his heart.  A nurse taught Gladio how to safely remove an IV needle, saying, “We don’t think you’ll ever need to know this, but as he gets his strength back, he might shift strangely while he’s sleeping.”  He frowned and added, “The doctor’s also worried about seizures.  If you have to take the IV out for any reason, run and get an adult as fast as you can, okay?”

Gladio had nodded and paid close attention to the process.

It didn’t seem that relevant, though.  Noctis was very weak.  He could only sit up for a few moments at a time because it put so much strain on his lower back.  His eyes had a glazed, far-away look that Gladio was supposed to ignore.  Sometimes, he said mean things just to piss Gladio off.  Sometimes, he just lay still as tears flowed out of his eyes, and that was worse.

Noctis was at his most unmanageable during physical therapy.  Dr. Trajo would remind him he needed to maintain some muscle mass and flexibility so he’d be able to heal quickly, but Noct wasn’t having any of it.  He said the stretches made his back hurt, and it wasn’t like the doctor could argue with that.

“Why do you always yell at your physical therapist?” Gladio asked one day while they chatted.

Noctis was quiet for a long time.  He did that now, like speaking took so much energy he had to prepare for it.  “He always touches me,” he said quietly.  “No one used to touch me except Mom and Dad and Miss Assa, and sometimes you and Iggy.  Now there are all these doctors and nurses and therapists, and they all want to look at my back and my leg, and I hate it.”  Noct was crying.  The doctor said it was normal for the pain medicine to make people cry more easily, but Gladio still felt bad.

“Should I go?” Gladio asked.  “I didn’t mean to be rude.”

Noct shook his head.  “I’m so bored.  I’ve been lying here for a month.  I hate it.”  He raised his arm to cover his eyes, the way his physical therapist wished he would do during therapy.

“What if I was your physical therapist?” Gladio asked.  If he studied up, maybe it would work.  “Would it be okay if it wasn’t a stranger?”  He’d heard his dad and King Regis talking about how a good physical therapy program would help Noctis sit up for longer.  If he could just use the wheelchair that was waiting for him in the nursery outside his bedroom, they could go to the gardens and the movies and do all the other things Noct loved.

“Maaaybe,” Noct said hesitantly.  With some coaxing, he let Gladio try leading the stretches, just like the physical therapist did.  He was pretty easy to work with; he hadn’t lost so much of his strength that he couldn’t lift his arms or bend his good leg.  He declared that Gladio would be his PT doctor, and they returned to talking about movies.

.-._.-._.-._

With a little convincing, and with a defeated sigh of “I suppose everyone needs a summer project,” Gladio’s dad took him to the Royal University library to check out books on injury recovery and exercise science.  Despite all the trouble he had reading for school, Gladio threw himself into learning muscle groups, stretches, and massage techniques.

It all felt easy to learn, even intuitive.  Gladio could identify the muscles on his own body, could feel them when he tried the stretches on himself, and he quickly developed a routine for Noctis that was based on what Dr. Trajo had tried to do.

It was a week until Gladio saw the physical therapist in Noct’s room again.  “Can I try?” he asked politely as Noctis grimaced his way through leg stretches.  “I’ve been studying.”

“Master Amicitia,” the doctor began.  The difference between ‘Master’ and ‘Mister’ was usually the difference between yes and no, so that wasn’t the best sign.  “To do my job, I had to train in medicine for years.  I have over a decade of experience in my field.  What makes you think you can do this?”

Last winter, in preparation for the Festival of Shiva, Gladio’s parents had taught him all about how to be polite to people.  “This is what your etiquette lessons won’t teach you,” his mom had told him with a conspiratorial wink.  Put simply, different people thought different things were polite, especially when it was a child speaking.  Dr. Trajo was the kind of person who thought he was better than everyone, the kind Gladio’s mom had described as “the most boring people you can talk to,” and the way to communicate with a person like that was to pretend they really did know more than you could ever hope to learn, and you were just grateful to be in their presence.

He couldn’t think of anyone worse to handle Noctis when he was this upset.

“Because you’re here,” Gladio said.  “If you make sure I can do it right, then I’ll be able to help Noctis when you aren’t around.”  Trying to sound like a reasonable candidate for medical training, he added, “They already showed me how to remove his IV three weeks ago.  And I need to know all about his physical therapy regimen for when I’m older and I’m his self-defense teacher.  I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather learn from.”  He smiled and did his best to look the doctor in the eye.

“I suppose…” Dr. Trajo said.  “But you’ll have to be _very_ attentive.  You have a lot to learn, young man.”  Success!  ‘Young man’ was better than ‘master’ any day.

Dr. Trajo set to work teaching Gladio things he already knew.  Gladio treated every snippet of information like something fascinating, a revelation, rather than something he’d already read about and tested at home.  He also chatted with Noct, who was in much better spirits than usual.  In fact, he was so much more animated that Dr. Trajo asked if he’d had his medication adjusted or gotten some very good news, and Noctis ruined Gladio’s whole plan by chirping, “No, I just like Gladio more than you.”

The thing that very proud people hated, Gladio’s dad had told him during that conversation in November, was when people implied there was anyone who was as good as them.  He was wishing now that Noct’s parents, or his nurse, or anybody in his life had told him that, because even Gladio, who was so bad at social skills he had a special kind of speech therapist to teach him how to talk to people, could predict the catastrophic meltdown the doctor was about to have.

“Your Highness,” the man said, bowing as if that was even appropriate to someone who was bedridden, “If you have such confidence in Master Amicitia’s abilities, perhaps you should encourage him to submit his credentials and a suggested course of treatment to Dr. Ossius for approval, as I did.”

“I said I like him more, not that he knows more,” Noctis said, and closed his eyes.  “Never mind.  My back hurts.  Go away.”

 _“Your Highness,”_ Dr. Trajo said, making the title, itself, into a threat through his tone, “You know that I meet weekly with your father, your other doctors, and your nurse.  Do you think they’ll be pleased to hear you’ve been fabricating symptoms to avoid necessary treatment?”

Gladio expected Noctis to start crying.  He at least expected those quiet, leaky tears he’d seen so many times now.  But, instead, Noctis turned cold.  His jaw clenched and he glared and said, “My back always hurts.  It’s been hurting for over a month.  Get out of my room.”

Dr. Trajo’s back was perfectly straight, his hands clenched into fists at his sides.  “Your Highness, I work for His Majesty, not for you.  I _will_ treat you, no matter how stubborn you decide to be.”

“Get out,” Noct said again.  The room got colder and Gladio backed away from him, looking for a pillow, a book, anything he could shield himself with if things went south.

“His Majesty _will_ hear about this,” the doctor said as he got the hell out of dodge.  The door shut firmly behind him and Gladio’s shoulders relaxed.

Gladio wasn’t sure if he should stay and comfort his friend, or if he should get an adult who knew what they were doing.  Before he could figure it out, the door opened and Miss Assa, Noct’s nurse, walked in.  “Your Highness,” she said, her voice clipped, “Would you like to explain to me why you’ve decided to offend the nation’s foremost physical therapist?”

Noct went quiet.  He did that sometimes, with adults: just glared at them and let them reach their own conclusions.  He never used to, but he did it all the time now.

“I hope you have an explanation ready by the time I discuss this with your father,” she threatened.  “I know you know how to behave.”

“His back’s hurting,” Gladio blurted out.  “He was—he was just a little rude because he doesn’t like all these strangers touchin’ him, and then Dr. Trajo started yellin’ at him and bein’ rude.  He didn’t _want_ to make the room cold.”

The laser-sharp eyes of Noct’s nurse turned on Gladio now.  “And what would you know about what he wants or doesn’t want?” she asked.

“He’s my friend,” Gladio said simply.  “He told me.”  He was starting to shiver.  He wished he could open the window to let in the warm summer air, but he got the feeling Miss Assa would yell at him if he did.

There was a knock on the door and Gladio’s mom came in without asking.  “Darling, I’m sorry to barge in on your—where’s Dr. Trajo?”

“Lady Amicitia,” Miss Assa said with a quick, barely adequate curtsy, “His Highness is tired.”

“Oh, naturally,” Gladio’s mom agreed, pushing her way further into the room.  “That certainly hasn’t stopped him from taking visitors.  Why are you letting him stew in the cold?”  She crossed to a window and opened it, and completely ignored Miss Assa.  She sat on the opposite side of Noct’s bed from Gladio.  “Did you have to end PT early again today?” she asked, clicking her tongue in sympathy.  “That’s a shame.  Gladdy said you always feel you’re at odds with him.”  She leaned down to kiss Noctis on the cheek.  He glared at her.

That earned him another warm smile.  “I’ve brought you something,” she said, reaching into her purse.  “I’m sure you’re terribly bored of soup and pudding.  I can’t lift the ban on solid foods, but I did get you some caramels.”  She showed Noct the bag and then put it on his night stand.

“Say thank you, Noctis,” Miss Assa prompted him.  Noct rolled his eyes and looked away.

“There’ll be more than enough time for pleasantries when you feel better,” Gladio’s mom said firmly.  “Do you need a blanket while you wait for the room to warm up?”

That only earned her another glare.  She winked at Noct and said, “Your chiropractor says you can try your chair out in a couple days.  I take it she’s less of an ass than the PT doctor?”

“Why are you here?” Noctis asked in his rudest, most judgmental voice.

“In case you needed rescuing from Dr. Trajo,” she said as if it were the simplest thing in the world.  “You can’t always push him out of your room, you know.”

Noct’s mouth twitched and he said, “Watch me.”

“It’s a shame, really,” Gladio’s mom told him.  “If you were anyone else, you could just change doctors, get someone in here who knows how to work with nine-year-olds.  But you’re the Crown Prince of Lucis, and he was recommended by a Council member, so you’ll just have to figure out how to tolerate him.”

“I don’t care about him,” Noct told her.  “I’m never getting better, anyway; why does he care?”

“Sweet pea, you’re already better than you were,” Gladio’s mom reassured him, resting a hand on his shoulder.  “Do you remember?  The last time I was here, a week and a half ago, you didn’t tell me off with half the energy you have now.”  She leaned down and kissed him on the forehead.  “And don’t worry about figuring out Dr. Trajo, because I’m about to tell you just what to do.”

“You didn’t hear me,” Noctis told her.  “I said I don’t care.”

Gladio’s mom petted Noct’s hair, like she did for Iris sometimes.  “I heard you, darling.  I just didn’t believe you.  I think you care a lot.  I think you’re trying to force yourself to stop caring.  It’s very painful, isn’t it, when you try your best and adults still yell at you?”

Noct rolled his eyes and didn’t say anything.

“It happens to a lot of people,” she added.  “The world is bigger and scarier than ever before, and you try so hard to be nice, but it was never hard before, was it?  It used to be very easy.  Let me tell you how to get Dr. Trajo out of your hair, love.  You don’t need the stress.”

Gladio wanted to say something, wanted to tell Noctis to stop being rude to his mom, but she had it handled and he didn’t want to screw anything up.

“What you need to do is negotiate a deal,” she said.  “A very tricky one, too.  Now, before you make a deal with someone, you need to know what your priorities are.  Those are the things you want, and you rank them in order from essential to unimportant.”

“My top priority is to get him away from me,” Noctis told her.  “But he only ever does that when I tell him my back hurts.”

“Your top priority is to _heal up and feel better,_ ” Gladio’s mom reiterated.  “The only reason you’re seeing him at all is that you’re hurting, and it’s so bad you can’t get out of bed.   What you want from him is some physical therapy that makes you feel good, and what he wants from you is a well-behaved patient.  Does that sound right?”

Noct shook his head.  “He wants me to think he’s the seventh Astral,” he said.

“I think he wants your _father_ to think he’s the seventh Astral,” Gladio’s mom told him, smiling.  “So he wants to make a big show out of helping you.  He wants you to sing his praises from the rooftops.  What could he do that would make you happy enough to put in a good word for him?”

Noctis said nothing again and looked away from her.

“Let me ask that a different way,” she offered.  “How do you need to be treated by your physical therapist?  What could a person do to make you feel safe and comfortable?  Do they need to chat with you?  Do they need to treat you like an equal?”  Noct stayed quiet and didn’t look at her.  She started petting his hair again.  “It sounded like you didn’t like how condescending he was.  That he acted like he was more important than you.  If he didn’t do that, do you think you could work with him?”

“I don’t like him touching me,” Noct told her, still not looking her way.  “It was fine when it was Gladio.  But he went mean when I said so.”

Noct hadn’t said Gladio was alright; he’d said he liked Gladio more than Dr. Trajo, and Gladio knew it.  But he couldn’t get his words together to say anything before his mom started speaking again.

“Is it okay if Gladiolus does the work and Dr. Trajo takes the credit?” she asked.  “Is that a deal you could live with?”

“He shouldn’t get any credit,” Noct grumbled.  “He doesn’t deserve it.”

“Plenty of people get what they don’t deserve,” Gladio’s mom said.  “You aren’t Etro, love.  You don’t need to weigh anyone’s soul.  What you do need to do is follow the course of treatment Dr. Trajo prescribes.  That’s your top priority.  And you want to interact with him as little as possible.  That’s your second priority.  To get both of those things, you’re going to have to give him something back.  Telling people he’s an expert in his field isn’t a lie and, if you tell Dr. Ossius or your dad that you don’t like him after he’s gone on his way, he certainly doesn’t need to know.”

Noctis went quiet again.  Gladio couldn’t handle the silence; he said, “It would be okay with me.  I don’t want people asking me about our PT sessions, anyway.  And I’m gonna need some supervision.”

“If you can think of a better deal, I’m all ears,” Gladio’s mom told Noct.  “But you can’t keep banging your head against the wall while your muscles weaken.”

“Watch me,” Noct spat.  “Why do you even care?  I’m never getting better!”

“Noctis!” Ms. Assa said his name sharply and Gladio flinched, but Noctis didn’t.  “Lady Amicitia, I’m so sorry for His Highness’ behavior.  He usually takes a nap after physical therapy; I’m sure he’s tired.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it for a second,” Gladio’s mom soothed.  “You told me he was tired when I came in.”  She turned back to Noct and said, “Noctis, love, you’re getting better all the time.  Look at you: you have color in your cheeks, you’re standing up for yourself, you take regular naps instead of drifting in and out like the first couple weeks…  It might feel slow, but you’re doing so well, darling.  I’m sure, by the time I’ve heard you’re cleared to use your wheelchair, you and Iggy will be racing up and down the halls and scaring Miss Assa half to death.  But you’ll only feel better if you stick to your PT plan, and you’ve been letting it slip.”

“Dr. Trajo’s been letting it slip,” Noct grouched.  “He’s the one who knows how much stretching I need.”

Gladio’s mom smiled.  “You can’t pretend you didn’t have a hand in that, sweet pea.  You just told me you make him leave you alone by telling him your back hurts.  You can’t say the one thing you know will make him go and then blame him for spending too little time with you.”

Noct stared at her, his expression deadly serious.  Gladio felt a breeze start to stir.  Then Noctis said, “You’re exactly like every other adult, aren’t you?”

Gladio’s mom took her hand away from Noct’s hair to rest it on his shoulder.  The room was definitely starting to get cold again.  “What do you mean, darling?” she asked.  “What do you think I’m doing?”

“Stop pretending!” Noct yelled.  “Everyone’s always lying to me!”

“Noctis, stop this instant,” Ms. Assa cut in.  “Get a hold of yourself!”

“Noct, I’m not lying,” Gladio’s mom said, still sounding calm.  Gladio shivered in the icy wind.  “I’m not playing dumb.  I genuinely don’t know what I’ve done to upset you.  We can figure this out, little one.  What did I do?”

“You just want me to stop complaining!” Noct yelled.  “You want me to—to not be hurt, or mad, or anything else!  You think I’m lying about my back!”  Gladio rubbed his goosebump-covered arms.  “Well, I don’t want to get better!  I can’t!  You can’t make me, and neither can Dr. Trajo!”

Gladio’s mom paused for a second before she asked, “Do you feel like I’m blaming you for saying your back hurts?”

“You think I’m lying!” Noctis accused her.  Frost started to grow on the cup of water next to his bed.  “Dr. Trajo does, too!  No one believes me that it hurts all the time!”

“Darling, I’m so sorry,” Gladio’s mom said, still sounding perfectly calm.  “I didn’t mean to imply that at all.  Of course you’re hurting, or you’d be able to jump out of bed right now.  Dr. Trajo, Dr. Ossius, your nurse… They all understand that, Noct.  You’re hurting, and mourning, and bored, and you still have to act like a Crown Prince.  But don’t you dare lie to me and say you didn’t have other reasons for ending your PT sessions early.  You ended them because Dr. Trajo is an intolerably conceited man who treats you like a body instead of a person, and not because your back couldn’t take any more.”  She sighed.  “I’m sure you must be very scared, if you’d rather sabotage your own recovery than try and risk failing.  That sounds like an unbearable amount of fear.  I don’t want you to hold all that inside yourself, but there are better ways to let it out than freezing your bedroom.  You can’t yell and scream every time someone holds you accountable for your actions and then complain that people aren’t honest with you.”

“I’ll do whatever I want,” Noctis told her, his voice as icy-cold as the air in the room.  “I’m the Crown Prince.  You can’t make me do anything.”

“You are,” Gladio’s mom acknowledged.  “You’re also a nine-year-old boy.”  She reached out to touch his hair again and the wind stopped.  “You aren’t bad, Noctis.  I know you don’t mean to hurt anyone.”  Noctis closed his eyes and his face scrunched up.  “I know how scary it is,” she repeated, and Noctis started crying.

“It’s so hard all the time,” Noct said tearfully, and he reached up and put his own hand over hers.  Gladio reached out to take Noct’s other hand.

Gladio’s mom sighed.  “I know, sweetheart.  I understand.”

“I didn’t get to go to Mom’s funeral,” he whispered.

Gladio’s mom leaned forward and kissed Noctis on the forehead.  “There’s another memorial in two weeks,” she reminded him.  “If you do all your stretches and exercises, and you don’t spend all your energy on anger, and you mind your doctors and nurse, you should be able to sit through the whole thing.  Can you do all that for me, Noct?”

He nodded, just slightly, like he was scared he wouldn’t be able to.

“There’s a good boy,” Gladio’s mom said, smiling gently.  “It’s already your nap time, little one.  I’ll tell Dr. Trajo all about our plan, and I’ll tell Dr. Ossius how hard your feelings are, and we’ll make sure you’re all taken care of, darling.”  She petted his hair until he was mostly asleep, then stood up.  Gladio followed suit.  His mom gestured to Ms. Assa and they all left Noct’s room together, shutting the door before anyone said anything.  “I’ll tell Dr. Ossius he’s ready to start seeing a therapist,” she said.  She sounded tired, and not calm at all.

Miss Assa nodded.  She said, “Six,” in a whispery voice, like she was trying not to be too loud.  “I always… It’s like, when I’m with him for hours on end, it’s easy to forget how little he is.  Bet then he’ll do something like that, or I’ll look at his chair,” and she gestured to the still-unused wheelchair, “And I… He’s _so_ small.”

Gladio’s mom put an arm around his shoulders and he became aware that he was almost as tall as Miss Assa, which seemed like it should violate some kind of natural law.  His mom was still over a head taller than him, though.  “I don’t know _what_ I’d do if something like that happened to my own,” she told Miss Assa.  “I think it’s good for us – good for our humanity – to be shocked by the violence of it, but believing that doesn’t make it easier to bear.”

Mis Assa looked at her for a moment and then said, “I also want to say… I know what you were doing in there.  And I want to thank you for it.  He really needed someone to… _be her_ for a bit.”

Gladio felt his mom nodding, felt her jaw move against his hair.  He could hear the soft smile in her voice as she said, “Anything to help him.  And it helped to settle Aulea’s memory for me, too.  I think he’ll settle down considerably after he’s been to a memorial service.”

“And gotten some therapy sessions,” Miss Assa added.  “We didn’t want to tire him out – you know how tired he was – but clearly, it’s time.”

“I’ll tell Cor to drop by, too,” Gladio’s mom promised.  “He’s great with kids, takes them seriously.  I need to take Gladdy to a Royal University event so I can schmooze with some administrators and he can charm some music undergrads.  If you want, I can link you a recording of the concert tomorrow so he and Noctis can talk about it.”

“I’d appreciate it,” Miss Assa told her, smiling.  “I can remind him he’ll be able to go to concerts and shows again after he starts using his chair.  That should be almost as much incentive as Her Majesty’s memorial.”  They said goodbye, and Gladio promised he’d be back tomorrow, and he and his mom left.  He wondered if Noctis was going to feel better the next day, with a plan in place, or if he was still going to be grumpy.


	12. Physical Therapy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gladio has lunch with his dad and takes Noctis to a PT appointment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long! My goal for these chapters is around 5,000 words, and this one ended up being about 8,700. I think it turned out really good, and I hope you like it! Happy holidays (Channukah's come and gone, but I gorged myself on latkes and applesauce and I hope you did, too!) and happy new year! I'll try to get another chapter up in a week or two. :)
> 
> I realized that, when I wrote about Gladio being nonverbal, it wasn't really what I feel when. I'm having a hard time finding the right words. I'm trying to do better in this chapter.

Gladio was in the habit of answering his phone.  Even when he was out having lunch with his dad before they went through some legislation – as training for when Gladio would be in the King’s Council – when his phone rang, he figured it was probably Iggy and answered it immediately.  He’d already pressed his phone to his ear when he realized the name that had flashed on the screen was Noct’s pseudonym.  “Hey, princess, skipping class, are we?” he asked.

“Nah, it’s lunch,” Noctis told him.  “Look, I’m just calling to make sure you’re the one picking me up today.”

“Tell him I said hi,” said a muffled voice in the background.

“Oh, and Prompto says hi.”                                                                                                    

“Say hi back for me,” Gladio told him.  “And, yeah, I think it’s me today.  We’re going to see Dr. Trajo, right?”  Noct only met with him a few times a year now, for a consultation, and usually Gladio took him because, even though Noct knew all his regular stretches and emergency plans, it never hurt for Gladio to get a refresher, as well as an update from someone a lot more experienced than he was about how Noct was doing.

“Yeah.  And I was thinking: you know how we do, like, a good-cop, bad-cop thing when we see him?”

That was news to Gladio.  He’d always thought Noctis had just never stopped being an obnoxious little shit.  “No, I didn’t, actually,” he told his charge, letting himself sound annoyed.  “Because that would imply that we’re trying to get some kind of information out of him that he doesn’t _willingly give you as your doctor.”_  Across the table, Gladio’s dad raised his eyebrows at the side of the conversation he could hear.

“Well, I was thinking we could change it up this time,” Noct continued, as if Gladio hadn’t just disagreed with him.  “What if, this time, I’m the good cop and you’re the bad cop?”

Some grainy, soft sound came through the phone that sounded sort of like Prompto saying, “Noct, you’re so _weird!”_

How was Noctis seventeen years old and still acting like this?  “I’d definitely recommend that you act like a well-behaved Crown Prince of a major world power,” Gladio told him.  “I don’t really plan on being rude to one of your doctors, though, for a number of reasons that I’m not going to outline.”

“I’m just saying,” Noct told him, sounding a little defensive.  “How do we even know he’s any good as a physical therapist?”

Gladio pinched the bridge of his nose to focus himself so he wouldn’t yell at his friend.  “What, do you want a lollipop at the end of your visit or somethin’?  You’re old enough he shouldn’t have to use his best pediatric skills on you anymore.  Just go.  To the appointment.  And let him look you over like a regular doctor.”

“I was just thinking.  Y’know.  Keeping his head in his ass all the time isn’t very ergonomic.”

Gladio snorted from trying not to laugh, but he still said, “You’re at school, Noct; don’t say ‘ass.’”

“That sounds like a _much_ more interesting PT session than his previous ones,” Gladio’s dad chimed in, having heard absolutely nothing Noct had said so far.

“I’ll say whatever the fuck I want,” Noctis said casually.  “What’re they gonna do, put me in detention?  I have a medical appointment.”

“Alright, smartass,” Gladio said, rolling his eyes at Noct’s childishness even though he couldn’t help smiling.  “I’ll be there to pick you up after school.  I’m not doing any good-cop, bad-cop, though.  We’re both gonna be good, and we’re gonna talk with him about finals and the winter holidays, like _adults,_ which you _almost are.”_  He hung up; he wasn’t going to get anything useful out of Noctis, least of all a promise to behave himself.

“Tell me more about this ass,” his dad said.  His sarcasm would have been audible even if he wasn’t visibly struggling not to laugh.

 _“Please_ tell me King Regis acted like a gremlin when he was younger,” Gladio begged instead, hoping Noctis was just being a regular bratty teenager.

His dad frowned.  “Reggie was fine, I think, more or less,” he said.  “I think he felt the weight of his duty pretty keenly, even then.”  He smirked and added, “It was me who was the bad influence between the two of us.  And I didn’t have someone sensible and devoted, like Iggy, to keep me from pulling pretty young ladies out of sight of their chaperones.”  There was a pause.  Gladio didn’t know how to respond to that.  He wasn’t sure if his dad _knew,_ or if he somehow thought Gladio and Iggy were just Really Good Friends, or if there was some way he could still throw him off by bringing up the woman he was pretending to date (and her girlfriend, who Iggy was pretending to date.)

His dad whispered, “Shit,” very quietly, looking down at the table.  He looked up and, at a more regular volume, said, “I should apologize.  I didn’t mean to raise the topic so carelessly.”

He should-- he should deny the whole thing.  Right now, while he had the chance.  He had all his alibis in place.

“He’s so beautiful,” Gladio whispered, like an idiot.  Like it was an issue of convincing his parents that he was really in love, and not an issue of political and social obligations.

His dad’s hand covered his.  “Gladio, it’s fine,” he said.  “There’s nothing to worry about.  If there were a problem, don’t you think your mother and I would have arranged a time to talk with you about it years ago?”

Gladio felt like every talking point he’d ever thought about for coming out was being held behind a wall in his brain that he couldn’t cross.  “I didn’t-- want you to think I wouldn’t marry,” he said.  “I’m going to… be a good heir.”

“There’s nothing to be afraid of, dearest,” his dad told him, squeezing his hand.  “We know that’s a separate issue.”

“I’m bi,” Gladio blurted out.  When he talked about it with Iggy, his sexuality was something nebulous that he couldn’t possibly describe in one word. But now that he was talking to his dad, he wanted to use a word that was decisive and didn’t leave any room for argument.

“Dearest, I know,” his dad said, and an exploratory glance up at the bottom half of his face showed Gladio he was smiling.  “You don’t need to make excuses, Gladio.  Your mother and I love you.”

“I just—I don’t want—” He moved his hand to try to keep his brain moving.  Reporters?  News?  The people who—“The press!  I don’t want the press finding out, and it’s fine if you’re… also worried about that, as the King’s Shield, and I don’t want you to… hhhharbor some kind of grudge against me for making things hard for you while you’re trying to support me as your son.”  And his heir.  Gladio didn’t have to say that part out loud.

His dad just smiled.  “Gladio,” he said, like he had full confidence and answers to everything, “I’m your father.  It’s _my_ job to protect _you._   You don’t need to worry about that.”

Gladio tried to let that calm him down, but it didn’t.  It just left him with the same problem as before.  “Okay, but I _want_ to have a hand in protecting myself,” he argued.  “I want to know what to say, and how to act, and what to _do_ if we do get caught to keep things from turning into a big deal.”

His dad shrugged and said, “You’re a Shield now.  The privacy of your personal life is important for national security.  Before now, any news stories would have been infringing on the privacy of a minor.  So you’ve been perfectly safe the entire time, and it really comes down to your mother and me trying not to screw this up.”

“Would you please—not say it that way?” Gladio requested.  “You didn’t screw anything up.  I should’ve told you a long time ago.  I _meant_ to.  Isn’t very brave, is it, being a Shield who can’t even tell his own parents he’s bi?”

“I will absolutely keep saying it this way,” his dad told him calmly.  “It was your mother’s and my job to be trustworthy enough that you could tell us this sort of thing, and we weren’t.  I won’t have you taking this responsibility on yourself, when you’ve only just come of age a few months ago.”

“I did want to tell you,” Gladio protested.  “I just… I promised Iggy I wouldn’t say anything until he’d come out, and he… isn’t the best at rocking the boat.  And I think it really is harder for him, because he’s… Not bi.  He’s just gay.  And he’s still gonna have to marry and everything, and he _can’t_ be in love with a woman.”

“Let me get this straight,” Gladio’s dad said.

“That’s gonna be _really_ hard, Dad,” Gladio couldn’t resist saying.  His dad paused and then put a hand over his eyes, an excellent response to such a terrible pun.

 _“Anyway,”_ his dad continued, gesturing like they were discussing a Serious Topic now, “I really need to clarify: Iggy is out to his uncle about being trans, and open enough with him that he knows which nights his nephew injects testosterone, but he somehow thinks that just being gay is going to create some sort of terrible rift between them?”

Gladio rolled his eyes.  “Well, when you say it _that_ way, it sounds stupid,” he pointed out.  “But it’s… been a big deal, and I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t say it that way in front of him.”

“I understand,” his dad told him, raising his hands in an I’m-backing-down-now gesture.  “But I also think, if he did come out, that nothing whatsoever would change.”

He didn’t say it like an opinion.  He said it like he had insider information.  But that was impossible, because Iggy also had insider information, from the eavesdropping he hadn’t stopped doing since they were eleven, and if Iggy had heard a random sampling of their parental figures’ conversations, then—

“You knew Iggy eavesdropped,” Gladio accused.  “You knew it was happening, and you never said anything.”

“Gladdy, I taught the two of you to move soundlessly when you were preteens,” his dad reminded him.  “Did you somehow think I hadn’t met Ignis before?  That his history of getting into as much trouble as humanly possible had somehow eluded me?  I’m not actually an idiot; there’s privacy and then there’s _privacy,_ and we weren’t about to let a teenager think all his secrets had been laid bare.”

Gladio was laughing too hard to respond.  Finding out his dad and Tellus had known they were queer for years and never said anything left kind of a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach; finding out his dad and Tellus had known about Iggy’s eavesdropping and said nothing and let him keep it up was _hilarious._

“Are you alright, dearest?” his dad asked.  “I know I’ve given you a lot of information without any way to prepare yourself.”

“We could have told you forever ago,” Gladio pointed out, and his eyes were starting to ache.  “We could’ve just…  Iggy didn’t have to have any of his panic attacks over it, I didn’t have to… I mean, I was worried, y’know?  I know you and Mom aren’t… dramatic, or anything, but I didn’t want you to…”  He floundered, looking for a word.

His dad didn’t cut in with reassurances.  At last he said, “Didn’t want us to what, Gladio?”

He kept trying to find words the normal way, until his brain decided to go around the problem instead and just let him use lots of small words and he said, “I didn’t want to go back to being the kid who’s always getting in trouble and screwing up in these big, public ways.  I didn’t want you to worry about whether I’d be responsible about it or not. But I still would’ve come out if Iggy was ever ready for it.”  Without realizing, he was only looking at the table now, at the base of the little vase of flowers in the middle.

“Dearest, you tend to worry,” his dad reminded him.  “Not as badly as Iggy, but then, outdoing Iggy’s anxiety would be a superhuman feat.  Of course your mother and I trust you to be discreet, just as we would if you were straight.  And just as I’m now going to trust you to be the one to tell him it’s safe to come out, because the poor boy would probably have a stroke if his uncle brought it up to him.  Did you say he has panic attacks about it?”

Gladio nodded.  “Yeah.  I mean, he would’ve found _some_ thing to worry about, but.  Y’know.  It didn’t help.” 

“No, I imagine not,” his dad agreed.  He frowned for a moment, thinking, and then said, “Invite him to dinner sometime so your mother and I can welcome him properly.” And that was… that?  That was exactly what Gladio would want if he was dating a woman.  It had been so _easy._

Gladio murmured a quiet “thank you” while looking down at the meal in front of him, and suddenly realized his beard hadn’t been invited to the house nearly as quickly.  He looked up and said, “Oh, but in public, it’s still Miss Leville.  She and Miss Keycatrich do need to stay closeted.”

His dad nodded.  “Yes, no problem,” he said.  “You don’t need to maintain the façade anymore once you’re here, though.  I must say, the double-dates that just happened to always be with your actual sweethearts were an inspired touch.”

Gladio blushed hard.  “Yeah…  We weren’t the _most_ subtle, but.  Still, I don’t want either of them to get in trouble.”

“Naturally not,” his dad agreed.  “They’re still good friends of yours.  And, if you deprive me of the chance to keep an eye on Miss Leville’s bird videos, I’ll be very upset with you.  I always look forward to them.”

Gladio smiled, looking down again.  He’d come out (been pulled out of the closet?) and here he was, joking with his dad about his beard and her chocotiel videos.  It was actually fine.  His heart rate was up because revealing a years-old secret wasn’t exactly easy, but that was just nerves.  The reality was, things were cool.

“Speaking of birds,” his dad said, “This re-zoning bill.  Doesn’t the map look a bit sparse on park land to you?”

.-._.-._.-._

Gladio arrived at Noct’s school ten minutes before the last bell rang, and hung around at the front gate, checking his phone as an excuse to text with Iggy for a few minutes.  They mostly just traded silly pet names and bad puns back and forth.

Finding Noctis, an Insomnian-born-and-bred teenager in a sea of Insomnian-born teenagers, was a task and a half, but fortunately, Gladio was particularly easy to spot, being six-five with tattoos and great hair.  He spotted Noctis when Noct was already headed toward him.

“Hey, Gladio,” Noct said, pretending he was ‘cool’ or ‘chill’ or whatever act he was putting on these days to cover up his depression.  “We ready to ship out?”

Gladio nodded.  “Yeah, got a nice spot at the front of all the traffic.  Is your little blonde shadow coming?”

Noct shook his head.  “Nah, I told him it was at the Citadel so he wouldn’t come.”

“He still scared of us upper-crust types?” Gladio asked, frowning, as he led the way to where his car was parked up the street.  “That sucks.  You should introduce him to more people.  I mean, it’s one thing for Iggy to scare him – Iggy scares High Court judges when he’s pissed enough – but the people in the Citadel are mostly just… people.”

“I keep telling him there’s no reason to be scared of a bunch of invertebrates,” Noct said, because he was still pissed about the most recent talks with Niflheim, “but he says it doesn’t count if they’re only spineless metaphorically.  Oh, nice, you got one of the unmarked Crownsguard cars?”

Gladio nodded and said, “Yeah.”  He wasn’t sure what was ‘nice’ about that; they usually didn’t have any trouble even in a fully marked car with flags.  But Noctis never said what he meant when he could help it, so Gladio figured he’d find out later if it was important.

They got into the car and Noctis lost no time pushing his seat back all the way down and propping his feet up on the dashboard.  So it was a bad back day, then.

“Rough time with the school chairs?” Gladio asked as he got the car started and pulled out into the after-school traffic.

Noctis grunted an agreement.  “Remind me not to be a dumbass who leaves my back brace at home when I can’t decide if I need it or not.”

“Okay,” Gladio agreed.  “Hey, Noct?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t be a dumbass who leaves his back brace at home.”

He couldn’t see Noctis because Noct’s face was in pretty much the opposite direction from the road, but he heard the grin and almost-laugh in his charge’s voice when Noctis said, “Thanks, Gladio.  I’ll keep it in mind.”

“I’m so helpful,” Gladio told his charge, and then started singing along to the radio, which Noctis predictably joined along with, which distracted him pretty well.

“Learn anything interesting today?” Gladio asked when they reached a commercial break.

“Nah.  Just more about Insomnia’s King Mors fetish.”

“You _need_ to stop calling it that,” Gladio told him.  “I’m begging you.  I know it makes Iggy do that funny thing where his face scrunches up, but it’s just the two of us here, right?  You don’t need to choose the absolute worst phrasing possible.”

“There’s this guy in my class who transferred in from Lestallum a couple years ago, and he looked as uncomfortable as I felt,” Noct continued without acknowledging Gladio at all.  “But neither of us were gonna say anything.  You can’t just raise your hand and say: what about, uhhhhh, literally everybody else?  Or, like: hey, just so we’re all clear that he wasn’t the pinnacle of good kingship, he was literally an abusive asshole to my dad.  Not exactly gonna be on the test that he exiled his own son from the Capital City for a few months and then glorified the whole thing as soon as he forgave him.”

“You know I agree with you,” Gladio reassured him.  “Not like you’re getting any arguments here.  My dad always tells the part about how they had to find out from the _news_ that it was being framed as a tour instead of an exile.”

“Such amazing PR for such a terrible person,” Noct agreed.

“I feel like I asked if you learned anything, and you went on the same rant you always do when you take Lucian history,” Gladio told his friend.  “What about math?  Or physics?  Did you do anything _fun?”_

There was a pause before Noctis said, “We learned about circular motion today.  Mr. Tricae had a moogle plush with a string tied around its neck, and he spun it in a circle and threw it so we could all see how circular motion is just an object trying to go in a straight line, but being pulled into a central point.  Then he tied it around MooRula’s leg and we got to see that one, too.”

“Sounds great,” Gladio told him, smiling.  That was more the kind of thing he wanted Noctis thinking about when his injuries were giving him trouble.  “I wish my tutor had hurled plushies at me.  We just had fun example problems pulled from the books I was reading.”

“I guess that just means public schools get the cream of the crop,” Noct joked.  “Jealous, Gladdy?”

“Hmmmmmmmmm,” Gladio said, trying to sound Very Serious.

“Hmmmmmmmmm,” Noct answered, and Gladio could imagine one of those corny detective hats on his head.

They kept doing that back and forth until Gladio said, “Nah, I think I was still miserable in school, but I didn’t have my best friend there.  Maybe, if I’d gone with Iggy, we both would’ve liked it more.”

“And he could be less smug about himself,” Noctis grumbled.  He launched into an accent as he continued, _“I’m Ignis Scientia and I have three degrees and **you’re** just a high schooler who likes to worm his way out of eating vegetables, so I must be right about every single thing.”_

Gladio had to smile.  Noctis wasn’t _wrong;_ Iggy just wasn’t so pushy about his achievements around Gladio.  “Did you forget to read his briefings again?” he asked.

“Fell asleep while he was helping me with trig.  It isn’t _my_ fault if I can’t sleep; I’d been up late cramming because I keep getting called to the Citadel and I couldn’t study.  Gonna bring that up with the kingdom’s favorite physical therapist today.”

“He really does want to help you,” Gladio said for the thousandth time.  “And, Six’ sake, do your stretches every night.”

 _“You_ do your stretches every night,” Noct grumbled.  “See how you like it when you come in from an important meeting at one in the morning and you need to calm down enough to go to bed, and instead of ‘great job, Your Highness,’ every single person around you just has to chime in the next day about how lazy and rude you are.”

“Hey.”  Gladio tapped Noct’s foot, not looking away from the road.  “No breakdowns in my car.  You’re going to the doctor to get help with all that, yeah?  You’re gonna sort out a good plan of action.”

“It’s a Crownsguard car,” Noctis said drily.  “It was never yours.”

“It’s mine right now,” Gladio shot back.  “I’m driving it and I picked the music, so it’s as close to mine as any car.  So Iggy yelled at you once.  Iggy gets stressed out, too, and he’s a lot worse at time management than he pretends to be, so he was probably running on too little sleep, too.”  No physical pain, though, but Noctis would rather say just about anything than admit his leg and back bothered him no matter what he did, even when he was lying prone on his way to a physical therapy appointment.  “Neither of you idiots knows how to take care of yourselves.  Drives me up the Wall.  But I’m still gonna say: no breakdowns in my car.  Even if Iggy started it, which he didn’t, you should still save the sob story for your doctor so he knows just how much pain you’re in.”

“It was _fine,_ Gladio; I just couldn’t _sleep,”_ Noct insisted, because he was getting cranky as predictably as Iris had when she was little.  The protest was especially ineffective when delivered lying down with his feet elevated to make his back curve just right.

“So, like… Not fine,” Gladio said.  “Yeah, I gotcha.  You gonna tell Dr. Trajo you’ve been sleeping badly, like a responsible person who cares about his body, or am I gonna do all the talking again while you complain about bein’ there?”

There was a pause before Noct grumbled, “Yeah, I’ll do it.”  He raised his voice to a regular volume to add, “I just hate him.  He’s less bad now than he was when I was a kid, but that doesn’t mean I like him.”

Gladio rolled his eyes.  “Noct, the entire Citadel knows you hate him; just act civil for _once_ and we’ll get milkshakes or somethin’.  You don’t have to like him to have a working relationship with him.”

“You were gonna take me for milkshakes anyway,” Noctis accused.

“Damn right; you looked in a mirror lately?  You’re getting scrawny.”  He forgot to eat sometimes when his joints were acting up, so that scanned.  “I trust Iggy to get enough vitamins and protein into you, but sometimes you just need some calories, however they come.  Let’s get burgers and shakes tonight, and I’ll look away while you take all the vegetables off.”

“This is why you’re my favorite Shield,” Noctis told him.  “Your dad is _really talented_ at glaring me down at state dinners if I don’t put vegetables on my plate and also eat them.  He’s tag-teaming with Iggy.”

Gladdio shrugged and said, “You’re not getting scurvy from missing veggies at one meal,” and made a mental note to tell Iggy Noctis was going to be extra fussy about his food until his medication schedule got back on track.  Iggy almost certainly already knew, but it was always worth strategizing together.

The conversation dropped off after that.  When they were a minute or so away from Dr. Trajo’s office, Gladio said, “So, sounds like sleeplessness is a big thing you’ll be talking about.  The big I-word.  That city you’re being made duke of in a couple years.”

“How close are we?” Noctis asked, instead of an actual response.

“Couple blocks, why?”

Noctis sat up and pulled his seat-back upright, too, then rummaged around in his backpack.  “We’re parking in handicapped, right?  I remembered my placard today.”

Gladio smirked.  “The real one, or the expired one that says ‘By Order of Noctis Lucis Caelum’ on the back?”

“No, Iggy made me give him the fun one,” Noct told him.  “I think he didn’t realize I had it.  This is the real one.”  He pulled a blue tag out of his backpack and hung it on the mirror.  A quick glance showed Gladio it expired in 754, so it was the correct one.  Gladio always checked now, since the fake had almost gotten them towed once.  Amusing as it was watching Noct try to convince the tow truck driver not only that his disability was real even if his placard was expired, but that he was also the Crown Prince of the entire country, Gladio would rather never do that again, ever.

They unfolded out of the car and Gladio rolled his shoulders back to get the tension out from the bad ergonomics.  He would find a car that worked for him someday, but unmarked Crownsguard sedans usually weren’t made for someone his height.  He didn’t protest when Noct’s backpack was shoved at him, just took it and double-checked all the weak security points on the building as they walked up to the entrance of the clinic.  Nothing unusual was happening, but it was important to be sure.

The receptionist knew them, and told them to have a seat and the doctor would be ready for them in a few minutes, but Gladio still made small talk, complete with jokes about chauffering “His Royal Nuisance.”  When she asked how his day was going, he said it was “quiet,” and that wasn’t a lie, right?  He added that he’d gotten to have lunch with his dad, because that was nice.  It wasn’t often that his dad had time in the middle of the day.  And nothing had changed between them, so he didn’t even need to mention anything about their conversation.  That would be completely unnecessary, and definitely oversharing.

Another patient came out through the lobby, and then, a minute or two later, Dr. Trajo came to get them.  He stood stiffly, like he always did around Noctis, and Gladio noticed touches of gray hair at his temples for the first time.

Noct’s face when he walked into his physical therapist’s office had the same stubborn, sullen set as usual, and Gladio worried that all the discussion earlier about Noctis acting civil at this meeting was just nice words.

“Always good to see you, Your Highness,” Dr. Trajo said, because he still had his professional manners.  Gladio settled into one of the chairs by the door.

Noctis nodded, didn’t say anything, and hopped up onto the examining table.  “I’m really gonna try not to be an asshole this time,” he said, his eyes focused on his knees or maybe his feet, “but I’m tired from not wearing my back brace and I _can’t_ act friendly.  To anyone, not just to you.”

Noct’s head was ducked down and his shoulders were shrugged up to his ears.  He held his legs at different angles.  He really looked miserable.  If he was faking, he was faking well enough to trick Gladio.

“Alright,” Dr. Trajo said, quiet and businesslike, looking over a thick file that was open on the counter, “Let’s get straight to it, then.  You said you didn’t wear your brace today.  How often have you needed it recently?”

Noct’s eyes flicked up to Gladio, and then down again.  “Too much.  …But that’s not an answer.  Uhhhh… Usually, I need it two times a week, ish, but for the past couple weeks I’ve been wearing it about half the time.”

Dr. Trajo wrote for a few moments.  “And do you know why your back has been under so much stress?” he asked.

“Longer days, mostly,” Noct said.  He was still quiet.  “And more things to do.  Usually, I can rest it in the middle of the day.  Like, when I get home from school, I take some time to stretch it and rest it, and then after I do my homework I’ll rest it more.  Can’t do that when the Citadel needs you on-site to deal with whatever issues they’ve decided need a member of the Royal Family.”

“We talked about sleep a little, too,” Gladio prompted.  Noctis was acting like someone who could be taken to his physical therapist without having to pull his issues out of him with twenty minutes of deflection and denial.

“Yeah, sleep’s all fucked,” Noct continued.  “You know how it is.  Regular things get messed up, and my pain builds up, and my mood issues come back, and then I stop sleeping well, which makes all of it worse, which makes it harder to sleep.  So, I think what I really need is something to get me through finals and the Festival of Shiva, and then I’ll be able to do actual self-care and get all my systems back in place that were already working for me.”

“We can certainly discuss medications,” Dr. Trajo told him.  “But part of my prescription is going to be wearing your brace every day and getting your chair out if you need it.”  When there was a pause, he continued, “You knew that, right?  The way to ease the pain in your back is to take stress off it.”  He glanced at Gladio, who was the only person who usually responded to him during Noct’s visits.

“Yeah, I know; that’s not the problem,” Noct said, finally looking up and speaking at a regular volume.  “I was just trying to think about how to get around my school.  Passing period’s a nightmare even when I _can_ do stairs, so taking up four times as much space _and_ needing the elevator is gonna make things impossible.”

“I think your teachers will understand needing extra time to navigate the hallways in a wheelchair,” Dr. Trajo said, as if teachers were inherently reasonable people.

“Bet you they don’t,” Noctis said, somehow still less nastily than he usually acted during PT visits.

“Either way, it’s in your file with the school nurse,” Gladio said before the other two had a chance to start actually arguing.  “And just imagine the discrimination lawsuit they’d be worrying about if they got mad at you for not being on time.  What do you do when your knee acts up and you have to use the elevator, anyway?”

Noctis looked at him for a moment, and he looked… afraid?  Disbelieving?  Before he said, “I take the tardy.  I’m not gonna let people think the Crown is weak. And I’m not actually planning to listen to arguments about this from anyone who refuses to take sick days.”

They were definitely going to talk about that later.  Gladio took sick days, but only when he was sick.  When he was having a rough sensory day, he did his job, even if he was going to be somewhere loud, or somewhere with bright or fluorescent lights, or somewhere he’d have to fight hand-to-hand when he couldn’t stand skin contact.  But that was different from not taking care of his body, which he absolutely did.

“Yeah, okay, Mr. Not-Gonna-Be-An-Asshole-This-Time,” Gladio said.  “We’ll figure out the wheelchair thing later, but I think we should keep the doctor’s visit moving because that’s your best bet of needing your chair less.”

Noct rolled his eyes, because he could never help being a dramatic little shit, but said, “Yeah, okay,” and then looked at Dr. Trajo and said, “Oh, and you’ve probably heard this three times today, but it’s snowing tonight and my life is terrible.”

Dr. Trajo smiled like a regular human being and not the severe, unimpressed enigma he usually was and said, “You know, I heard it from the National Weather Service this morning, but you wouldn’t believe how word gets around between orthopedic patients.  If you don’t mind, I’d like to take a look at your back first, since it has so many more creative options for getting out of alignment than your knee does.”

Noctis took his shirt off and turned around so he could lie face-down on the table.  Dr. Trajo said, “Alright, just going to check out the alignment first; tell me if it hurts” and explored the bottom half of Noct’s spine gently with his fingers, frowning more and more as he went.  “Have you been doing your stretches every day?” he asked, and glanced up at Gladio briefly.

“Uh.  Most days,” Noct told him, voice muffled by the face-pillow holding his head up.

“Are we talking fifty-one percent or ninety-nine percent?” the doctor asked, smiling a little.

“Like ninety?  Ow, fuck!  Okay, that hurt.”  The doctor’s hands twitched away when Noct yelled, and Noctis kept speaking: “I miss a day every week or two, but I still get most of the benefit.”

Dr. Trajo started working on the vertebra below the one that was hurting, and Noct said, “Yeah, that one too, just not as bad.”  He moved down and Noct said nothing.

“Well, I do agree you’re getting the benefit of a regular stretching and exercise schedule,” Dr. Trajo said as he worked his way down to the tailbone, “But I do need you to do it _every_ night.  It’s not optional.”

“Alright,” Noct said.  “Tell me when to do my stretches on this day: I go to school, go home with my friend because we want to play a new videogame, have a snack, do our homework, and while we’re finishing up our History essays and getting ready for dinner, Iggy gets a call saying they need me at the Citadel.  So I go to the Citadel, and it’s all a political mess, and I don’t get back to my apartment until one in the morning on a school night.  When do I do my stretches?”

There was a pause and then Dr. Trajo said, “Well, _then_ I think what you do is, you tell your physical therapist you’ve had to keep unreasonable hours that stomp all over your recovery plan, and he takes it on himself to point out to Dr. Ossius that you’ve been keeping unreasonable hours for anyone, much less a seventeen-year-old, and he steps in on your behalf so that it sounds like you just can’t _help_ having a time you need to be home.  Doctor’s orders and all that.  I’m sure those hours are bad for your myriad other diagnoses, as well.”

“And you’re right,” Noct confirmed emphatically.

“Getting back on the subject of chiropractic, since that’s what I can help with at this particular moment, I’m going to stretch your spine out and resettle those two vertebrae that were hurting you, and then I’m going to give you a massage that makes you want to punch me, and I still won’t be done with you because then I’ll need to look at your knee.  Flip over for me?”

Noctis turned himself over slowly, keeping his lower back still.  He lay on the table with his knees up as Dr. Trajo wedged a pillow under his head.  “Alright.  Any prayers to say to the gods of stretching before we get to work?” the doctor asked.

“The gods of stretching can eat my entire ass,” Noct snapped.

“Still not the most creative one I’ve heard even this week, Highness; you’ll have to step up your game,” Dr. Trajo told him, and grabbed his knees, easing them back toward Noct’s stomach.

A lot of expletives and really nasty suggestions came out of Noct’s mouth during his spinal adjustment and the subsequent massage that was focused on getting the knots out of his back.  Dr. Trajo was in a surprisingly good mood, joking with Noct like a sarcastic asshole the way Gladio and Iggy did.  It was like he and Noctis were almost getting along.  They were definitely working toward the same goal, which was more than Gladio could say of any of Noct’s previous visits.

“Alright, that should be enough,” Dr. Trajo said after finishing a massage that had made Noct make some incredibly exaggerated-looking faces.  “I think we should take a break before I work on your knee.”  He shook his hands out and flexed his fingers.

“Yeah, I’m cool with that,” Noct agreed, sounding worn out.  Maybe telling Prompto to leave him alone was a good call.

“I can’t help noticing you’re in a good mood today,” his doctor told him.  “Any particular reason?  I wouldn’t usually expect that from you, with a cold front coming in and a knot like that in your back.”

Noctis stared at the ceiling for a few seconds, hands clasped over his still-bare ribcage.  Dr. Trajo waited for him, stretching his hands.

“I’m trying to be a better Crown Prince,” Noct said at last.  “A lot of bad decisions were made when I was nine, but you hated treating me about as much as I hated being treated by you, so I want to call it even and move on.”

The doctor looked like he was going to argue that, and started speaking multiple times before stopping himself. Finally, he said, “Fair enough.  No hard feelings, then.”  It was the smart thing to say, but Gladio was still impressed by both of them.  The doctor because he’d always had a stick up his ass, and Noctis because he was showing real maturity.

“You know this won’t stop me from taking a look at your knee,” Dr. Trajo pointed out.

“Damn,” Noct said, smiling and not even pretending he’d thought otherwise.  “Really thought I was gonna get out of that one.  Then you just go around, ruining my dreams…”

“Alright, then, I think we’ve had as much of a breather as we need; time to sit up,” Dr. Trajo said, and picked Noct’s shirt up so he could hand it to the Prince when he finally pried himself up off the massage table.

Noctis put his shirt on and took his pants off, since the thick pants of his school’s winter uniform didn’t pull up very well.  The doctor touched his knee delicately and shot him the _are you shitting me_ look Noct was used to getting from Iggy.  “Alright,” he said as he continued feeling the inflamed muscles, “New rule.  Back brace _and_ knee brace every day through January fifth.  Even if you also use your chair.  Six, what have you been _doing_ to this?”  He pressed the heel of his palm down a couple inches above Noct’s knee and pushed up along half the length of Noct’s thigh.

“AhhhAAAAAH” was the sound that came out of Noct’s mouth, and it really wasn’t an answer.  “Give a guy some warning!  It’s cold, okay?  I said.  It’s gonna snow.”

“This is more than cold or barometry.  Incoming.”  He kneaded along the length of Noct’s thigh again, ignoring Noct’s yell.

“Well, everyone’s playing soccer in PE.  So I said: I can’t do that, it’s cold and damp and I have this letter from my FUCK DON’T TOUCH THAT—Sorry, from my physical therapist.  Haaaaaaaa—Okay, yeah, I’m telling you this _or_ you’re un-fucking my knee, but we’re not doing both.  I can’t.  Shit.”

Dr. Trajo considered, then said, “We’ll have a consultation after, anyway,” and resumed massaging the muscles around Noct’s knee.  His remarks while he worked on Noct’s leg included “How were you able to walk in here on your own?” and “No, really, you barely even had a visible limp; I don’t even know _how_ a person can screw their thigh up this much.”  Finally, Noct stopped making horrified faces every time Dr. Trajo touched his leg and the doctor went into the next room to get an ice pack.

“Don’t start,” Noct said before Gladio could say anything at all.  Noct was pulling his school uniform trousers back on, and hopped on his good leg when he pulled them up to his waist.  “I already told you it hurt.  Anyway, _we_ haven’t had a session in two days, and he was right: the barometry’s all fucked.”

Gladio nodded because he really didn’t want to start a fight, at least before they left the doctor’s office.  He always made sure Noct did his stretches if they had a self-defense session together, and he knew what to do in, say, a back spasm emergency, but it was also up to Noct to trust him enough to speak up when he felt bad.  So, ultimately, it was up to Gladio to be trustworthy enough to confide in.

“Alright, this should help a bit,” Dr. Trajo said as he returned to the room.  He was holding an ice pack, which he attached to Noct’s knee with a bandage.  “I want you putting heat on that when you get home, but for right now, cold’s the thing.  Tell me more about your PE, and your sessions with Mr. Amicitia.”

“Well, Gladio goes easy on me before the Festival of Shiva; that’s not a problem,” Noct said straight off.  “My sessions with him are like.  Two-thirds self-defense and one-third stretching.  And school PE is… an issue, but the worst—Six, this sounds stupid.  The worst thing that happened today was when I told my math teacher I was late because I had to use the elevator and she just said, ‘Did you, though?’ like it was something optional.  What do I even say to that?  I don’t want to interrupt the whole class to have a legal debate with my teacher over one tardy. I just didn’t want to do stairs with my knee like this.”

“Well, firstly, I’m glad you didn’t,” the doctor told him, returning to the thick folder with Noct’s name on the front and beginning to mark some checkboxes.  “If it did come to a legal argument, you do have every right to use the elevator and to be late because of it, but you know that.  I guess just give her my number; I have a doctorate in telling people when they should use the elevator, so it won’t be any trouble telling her off.”

Dr. Trajo looked up at the silence that came from Gladio and Noctis both trying not to laugh.  “I’m sorry,” he said.  “Were you under the impression that I didn’t tell jokes?  If it’s any help, I also have a doctorate in telling people when they should take the stairs.”  He looked back down and raised his pen.  “Your back brace still fits?  No growth spurts or anything since August?”

“I’m the same,” Noct said, which wasn’t _quite_ true – he’d almost certainly lost a few pounds in the last few weeks – but it wasn’t anything that would effect the fit of his brace unless the waist stopped fitting well.  “And today just took me by surprise; I do wear it a lot, and it does help.”

“Good,” Dr. Trajo said, and wrote something down.  “And you said your medication wasn’t strong enough recently?”

Noct nodded.  “Yeah.  Just like every year.  Just throw all the pain control tools you have at me, because the season’s only getting started and I’m not gonna have any free time.” He sounded miserable.  Unfortunately, he was right: the yearly battery of finals and holiday events had only gotten worse as Noctis got older, and there wasn’t much Gladio could do about it, except maybe mention to his dad that it didn’t feel like protecting his Prince to escort him to an overwhelming number of ceremonies and parties that would definitely fuck up his back.  King Regis had similar problems; if Gladio was lucky, maybe his dad would have some advice.  He… wasn’t mad at Gladio, and he would want to help.

Noct and his doctor talked through different ways to preserve Noct’s health through the holiday season while Gladio tried to listen and got distracted thinking about how his dad seemed to… actually be cool with him not being straight?  He knew he should focus better, but it was hard.

“Nah, he just zones out sometimes.  Gladio?” Noct said, and Gladio felt like an asshole for startling when he heard his name.  His _job_ was to pay attention so he could keep Noctis healthy, not to spend all his time processing how ultimately futile it had been to be closeted.

“Yeah?  Sorry.”

“He was just saying you’ve been doing a good job with my back,” Noct told him.  “That he doesn’t need to add any new stretches or anything, and he’s impressed with how you’re usually able to fix my back enough after it goes into spasm that I can usually get to my room on my own.”

“Oh,” Gladio said, suddenly embarrassed that he was so spacey while receiving a compliment.  “Thank you.  I like to think I’ve learned a thing or two since I started.”  It was the moment when he was supposed to thank the doctor for teaching him so much, but he didn’t actually like the man who’d been so condescending to him for most of the time they’d known each other.  He could get along, for Noct’s sake, but going out if his way to thank the man wasn’t really what he wanted to do on any given day.

There was a very short pause before Dr. Trajo said, “Well, hopefully my lessons have been some help,” and then went on to tell Noctis about his new medication and stretching schedule that would help him   get through the holidays.

“And I’ll send your school’s nurse a letter reminding her that the excuse letter I sent her _must_ be distributed to _all_ of your teachers to ensure you receive adequate accommodations,” he finished, saying the words like he knew them by heart, like some kind of bureaucratic garbage he had to deal with all day every day -- which, to be fair, he probably did.  “No use sending it over if it isn’t going to be distributed properly.  Is there anything else that’s been bothering you?  Hand or wrist issues from writing essays?  Shoulder pain from trying to keep your lower back comfortable?”

“It was just my back and knee,” Noct said, eyeing the plastic bag full of ice attached to his knee.  He was probably thinking about how to get back to the car after the leg massage from Hell.  If he wasn’t, it was still fine because that was what Gladio immediately started worrying about.  Worst-case scenario, he could always just carry Noctis out, but his charge tended to get testy about letting his disability show in public.  “Which I may or may not be able to walk on now, so thanks for that.”

“Any time,” Dr. Trajo responded, smirking.  “Remember: when you get home, elevate it and use heat.  Elevate it in the car, too, if you can.  Tomorrow, do whichever feels more appropriate. You still use pillows and elemancy instead of heating and cooling packs?”

“Nah, I started using blankets instead of pillows on my knee,” Noct told him.  “They stay on better. Still carry the temperature around in my hands, though.”  He waggled his fingers in a way he never, ever did when doing actual elemancy.

Dr. Trajo blinked at him.  “Y.  Yes.”  Wait, was he nervous?  “Good.”  He marked something down, his movements stiff and abrupt.  Yeah, he was nervous!  That was hilarious!  After all his condescension and snarkiness, he was afraid of Noct’s elemancy!

“Oh, thinking about an exercise routine in the coming month or so,” Gladio said, because if Noct could be bitter and rude for eight years, he could too, and up until now he’d spent these sessions trying to get Noctis to actually allow his doctor to help him, “Elemancy might be a good option.  Your control’s been slipping recently.”  Only a little, and not nearly as badly as when he was a kid, but it was still technically true.  “That’ll be a lot easier on your back than sword drills.”

“I should probably brush up on seated self-defense, too,” Noct pointed out.  “But, yeah, mostly-elemancy sounds good.  It’s… draining, but it doesn’t actually _hurt,_ so it’ll be… I’ll figure out how to make it work.”

He didn’t look like he’d make it work.  He looked like he was already foreseeing a future where he was bone-tired every day, and with the state of Noct’s bones, that was probably worse than most other people’s bone-tiredness.  He looked like he was about to cry.

“I was thinking I could also talk with my dad,” Gladio told him.  “See what techniques he has for getting _your_ dad out of meetings and things when he needs time to breathe.”

Noct nodded.  “Yeah.  Yeah, that should help.”  He still looked tense, but when _didn’t_ he, these days?  He looked up at Gladio.  “I’ve got all my prescriptions sorted out, and my new stretching regimen.  We can head home.”

Gladio said, “Alright,” and then nodded to the doctor.  “Thank you for seeing us today.”  The appointment was scheduled months in advance, but it was still polite.

The doctor nodded to him and said, “You’re welcome,” and then looked at Noctis and added, “I hope the extra support will do most of it.  If you have obligations on a difficult day, just say you’re sick, because you are, and your doctor has ordered you to stay home, because I have.  And good luck on finals.”

“What if my finals are on a rough day?” Noct asked, getting down from the examining table.

“Then you email your teachers to reschedule,” Dr. Trajo told him.  “And you don’t do _anything_ to prompt a back spasm, or falling over, or any other medical emergency.  Does that sound alright?”

Noct nodded.  “Yeah, I can do that,” he said.  “Gladio, can you get my backpack again?”

“Yeah, I’ve got it.”  Noct would feel better in two days, once the soreness from getting all the knots and tension out of his back went away.  “You just focus on getting yourself to the car.”

Noct nodded, paused for a moment, and then walked into the hallway and through the waiting room as if he didn’t have an aching back and a knee that needed an ice pack.  Gladio got the doors for him and carried his backpack.

When they got back to the car, Noct sat in the passenger seat without pushing his seat-back down again.  “Alright.  Milkshakes at Kenny’s now?” he asked.

Gladio pulled the handicap placard off his mirror and tossed it into the back, on top of Noct’s backpack.  “Sounds good,” he agreed.  “I’ll call it in. Burgers and shakes for two, one chocolate, one mixed berry?”

“Mm-hm,” Noct agreed, already sounding like he was falling asleep.  “With a side of telling off my advisor.”  He slumped in a way that looked remarkably like being asleep, and Gladio pulled into a parking space at the edge of the lot so he could call their order in.


End file.
